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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



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THE 

Possibility of Not Dying 



A SPECULATION 



BY 

HYLAND C. KIRK 




NEW YORK 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

27 & 29 WEST 23D STREET 
1883 



COPYRIGHT BY 

HYLAND C. KIRK 
1883 



The 



Press of 
G. P. Putnam's Sons 
New York 



" T F I communicate the result of my inquiries to the 
world at large ; if, as God is my witness, it be with a 
friendly and benignant feeling toward mankind that I 
readily give as wide a circulation as possible to what I 
esteem my best and richest possession, I hope to meet 
with a candid reception from all parties, and that none 
at least will take unjust offence, even though many things 
should be brought to light which will at once seem to differ 
with certain received opinions. I earnestly beseech all 
lovers of truth not to cry out that the Church is thrown 
into confusion by that freedom of discussion and inquiry 
which is granted to the schools, and ought certainly to be 
refused to no believer, since we are ordered to prove all 
things, and since the daily progress of the light of truth is 
productive far less of disturbance to the Church than of 
illumination and edification." — John Milton. 



i 



PREFACE. 



HILE man is man and mind is mind, the same old 



questions relating to life and destiny must be con- 
sidered. And progress toward their solution must neces- 
sarily be slow ; for the thinking years of each generation 
are few, and to each succeeding generation the old ques- 
tions become new again ; and as things are, the traveller 
has time only to traverse a few paths in a well-trodden 
field ere he is directed to his own humble corner. 

It was the fortune of the writer to be born a Christian 
and to believe implicitly in the infallible correctness of 
the Scriptures for many years. It was also his fortune to 
reach the conclusion that between truth and human 
reason there can be no real antagonism. The following 
papers are the result of this conviction, and were wrought 
out at first not with the design of defending, neither of 
destroying, nor yet harmonizing, any doctrines, but simply 
with the view of ascertaining the truth as a matter of per- 
sonal interest. 

In preparing these papers for the public eye, though 
the writer has endeavored to divest himself of bias so far 
as possible, and to include in his investigations as wide a 
range of facts as possible, he has not been free from appre- 
hension. For he that is educated to believe any doctrine, 
alike with him that is educated to disbelieve the same, is 




V 



vi 



PREFACE. 



thereby to an extent disqualified from sitting as judge in 
the case ; and if the believer lose his faith or the disbe- 
liever become a convert, the bias of enthusiasm thus en- 
gendered is likely to be as great a barrier to impartial 
judgment as the previous condition. This is one difficulty, 
evidently, in the way of attaining truth ; especially so in 
religion where the array of many doctrines, the covert as- 
sumptions of many creeds, the threatenings of the eccle- 
siast on the one hand and the ridicule of the sceptic on 
the other, serve to complicate the problem and to prevent 
honest, careful judgments. 

Three classes of difficulties may be said to arise in the 
determination of religious truth : 

1 Those relating to the investigator, as bias, conceit, or 
ignorance. 

2 Those relating to the given religion, as assumed in- 
fallibility. 

3 The reconciliation of natural phenomena with the 
given religion. 

It is remarkable to what a degree of boldness the 
searcher for the real must first attain before he even dares 
to question the correctness of any religious precept which 
he may have been taught. And the reason is apparent ; 
for along with the inwrought opposition which the feelings 
must possess, goes that monition to the intellect which all 
religions in some form do embrace : " He that doubteth 
is damned," so that the first trace of doubt seems to 
amount to abjuration and denial. 

However, if a man discover errors in his mother-faith 
and meditatively agree to consider it a delusion, he should 



PREFACE, 



vii 



think twice before publishing such convictions to the 
world ; for whatever be the function of religion as related 
to a future, it is, despite of contradiction, the chief con- 
servator of morality in this life. No one has the right 
therefore to attempt the destruction of these barriers which 
protect society unless he has stronger methods of defence 
to substitute therefor. There have been not a few, 
Strauss or Comte for example, who, too late, have striven 
to promulgate some scheme of faith as a substitute for 
the system which their earlier and more powerful efforts 
had tended to overthrow. The process of edification, 
evidently, should keep pace with the process of destruc- 
tion, that when the shelter of the old creed becomes inse- 
cure, the well-supported canopy of the new faith may 
afford ample protection. 

The purpose of the writer will be attained if, despite 
the mistakes and imperfections found herein, there shall 
be recognized a basis of truth, w T hich shall stimulate 
others to consider more carefully and more fully, from a 
new — yet very old — stand-point, the problem of human 
destiny. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

FAVORABLE CONSIDERATIONS. 

The Subject not Absurd— The Principle of Self-Preservation— Intuition 
—Wordsworth — Evolution — Defects Show Improvement Possible — 
The Limit of Progress, Perfection— A Practical Consideration- 
Certain Errors of Belief— Necessary Relations of Mind and Matter 
— The Analogy of Nature 

CHAPTER II. 

THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 

The Kind of Evidence Demanded — Personal Power— Classical and Sa- 
cred History— Bearings of Christianity — Summary of Christ's Life— 
His Moral Teachings Unquestioned — Evidence for the Miraculous 
—Inviolability of Nature— Existence as a Whole — Persistence of 
Force — Evolution not Uniform — Antecedent Social Conditions — 
Parallel Philosophy — The Early Church— Variations— Claims upon 
Reason . 

CHAPTER III. 

THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. — ITS CAUSE AND EFFECTS. 

Living Forever— Objections— Myths and Legends— Poetry and Argu- 
ment—Suffering, Sorrow, and Ennui— Sour Grapes— The Desire 
Varies as Life Varies— No Feeling or Faculty Free from it— A 
Parallelogram of Forces— The Heavens Believed in— Stoicism- 
Religious Founders— The Instinct of Immortality— The Logical 
Sequence— Mind and Brain— Unknown Possibilities . . . . . 



X 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE EVIDENCE FROM POSITIVISM. 

PAGE 

The Positivisms Ground — The Same Premise but a Different Conclusion 
—The Body not a Machine— Death and Ignorance— Life's Differen- 
tial — Studies — Retarding Causes— Philosophy of a Human Being- 
Development and Reproduction Antagonistic— Facts. « . » 64 

CHAPTER V. 

IS THERE AN UNKNOWN FORCE ? 

Great and Small Streams— The Physical Forces not Life— An Unex- 
plored Venice— The Subjective Side of Force — Swedenborg's Vision 
— Mesmensm— Expectancy not Sufficient — Percentage of Fraud- 
Hamlet— Billiard Balls— The Leverage of Descent— A Human Por- 
cupine—Harmonious Growth ... 76 

CHAPTER VI. 

WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION ? 

Weeds — An Unexplored Sea — Various Lacks — Knowledge as a Solvent 
—The Antidote— The Dice of God and the Wages of Sin— Stand- 
ards— Positive Difficulties — Shakerism and Fourierism — A Higher 
Function— The Proof— A Mohammedan Paradise— 1 The Choir In- 
visible" — Fanaticism — The Monastic View — A Contrast— Weak- 
nesses— Woman— The Key to Heaven— Children .... 86 

CHAPTER VII. 

SPIRIT AND MATTER. 

Terms— The Doctrine not Materialism— Not Spiritualism— Correlation 
of the Vital and Physical — Animism— Mistakes — John Milton — The 
Analogy of Sleep— Powers of the Perfect— Extravagance— The 
Earth and the Unseen— Job— The Dreariest and Brightest— Continu- 
ity— Infinity Inward— Conclusion . <••••• • 104 



The Possibility of Not Dying, 



CHAPTER I. 



FAVORABLE CONSIDERATIONS. 



The Subject not Absurd— The Principle of Self-Preservation — Intuition- 
Wordsworth — Evolution— Defects Show Improvement Possible — The 
Limit of Progress, Perfection— A Practical Consideration — Certain Errors 
of Belief— Necessary Relations of Mind and Matter— The Analogy of 
Nature. 



HIS subject may appear to involve an absurdity ; 



A and doubts may suggest themselves to some as to 
whether there are any proper data for examining a 
matter so much at variance with our experiences. 

All human experience is, however, limited ; and the 
most exact results of that experience which we call sci- 
ence can not declare to be impossible, much less absurd, 
any thing beyond the researches it has already made. 

Were the laws and conditions of life fully known ; and, 
if in accordance with those laws and conditions, by actual 
experiment death could be shown to be inevitable, our 
subject in that case would involve an absurdity. The 
proposition " all men are mortal " is an unsound assump- 
tion — unsound, because not based on actual knowledge. 
Men, subjected to certain conditions, are mortal. This is 
a true proposition. That men subjected to certain other 




i 



2 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING, 



conditions may be immortal, we cannot deny. As knowl- 
edge is, our subject involves simply a matter of uncer- 
tainty, unless data can be procured such as shall afford 
means of determining the truth. 

It has happened both in the realms of discovery and 
invention that suppositions generally regarded as absurd 
have proved to be correct. For ages the earth was uni- 
versally believed to be flat ; and as late as the period of 
Columbus the mass of humanity did not believe in its 
globular form. With the opposition, prolonged for ages, to 
the theory that the sun is the real centre of our universe, 
every student is familiar. And let it be noted that prior 
to the demonstration of these two facts, the sphericity of 
the earth and its revolution around the sun, there was 
precisely the same reason for denouncing these doctrines 
as absurd as there now is for regarding the theory of 
physical immortality as absurd. And that reason is, igno- 
rance of the facts. The stubborn fact that all men now 
die is not different from the fact that rapid transit was 
impossible before steam was understood. Before the 
laws of refraction were known we could not see the invisi- 
bly distant, nor the invisibly small ; and at that pe- 
riod to see what presumably could not be seen might 
have been with equal consistency denounced as absurd. 
In fact, this very proposition was denounced by the 
enemies of Galileo, and the accuracy of such observa- 
tions was questioned even by the supposed founder of 
the inductive philosophy, Lord Bacon. Without examin- 
ing this proposition, then, we cannot denounce it as ab- 
surd or reject it as irrational. 



FA VORABLE CON SID ERA TIONS. 



3 



There are indeed certain general considerations which, 
when fairly considered, serve to offset in a great measure 
the bias of experience against this proposition. 
J Out of the depths of an unknown past our human life 
and consciousness arise. We know no other mode of ex- 
istence. We are naturally impelled to maintain this exist- 
ence as long as possible ; and aside from the bias of 
experience the same principle which impels us to preserve 
our existence tends naturally to make us believe in its un- 
limited extent. 

Men whose intuitions or power of grasping truth with- 
out passing through clearly defined processes, as the poets, 
have possessed this belief most fixedly; especially in youth, 
ere the rough facts of experience or the influence of social 
thought had opportunity to affect the mind. " Nothing 
was more difficult," says Wordsworth, " for me in child- 
hood than to admit the notion of death as a state applicable 
to my own being. I have elsewhere said, 

" A simple child 
That lightly draws its breath, 
And feels its life in every limb, 
What should it know of death ? 

"But It was not so much from the source of animal 
vivacity that my difficulty came, as from a sense of the 
indomitableness of the spirit within me. I used to brood 
over the stories of Enoch and Elijah, and almost per- 
suade myself that whatever might become of others, I 
should be translated in something of the same way to 
heaven. " 1 Though the millions who may have enter- 

1 Note to " Intimations of Immortality." 



4 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



tained the same view all now sleep in death, yet the very 
existence of such a belief is significant, demanding for 
its fulfilment, as it does, the realization of a life for which 
man is being fitted and for which he longs. 

The theory that man in some way has arisen from 
lower forms of animal life — a theory now admitted by 
most thinking people, — favors this hypothesis. 

Says Darwin : " Man may be excused for feeling some 
pride at having risen, though not through his own exer- 
tions, to the very summit of the organic scale ; and the 
fact of his having thus risen instead of having been 
aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still 
higher destiny in the distant future." Human weaknesses 
and defects are proof sufficient that man has not yet 
reached the acme of his development. 

Any individual who considers the phenomena of his 
own consciousness at a given instant, must be impressed 
with the imperfect character of its operation. There is 
an indefiniteness of grasp about the most vivid of our 
conceptions that betrays their defective nature. And if 
this highest human characteristic discloses weakness, it is 
unnecesssary to enumerate minor defects of mind and 
body clearly discernible to all. 

That some have fewer defects than others and that the 
same individual has more complete powers at certain 
times than at others, are facts sufficient to prove the pos- 
sibility of human improvement ; and so long as recog- 
nized defects exist, so long it is clearly evident that the 
limit of improvement has not been reached. Indeed the 
only logical limit to progress is perfection, whatever the 



FAVORABLE CONSIDERATIONS. 



5 



latter be ; and a satisfactory limit to progress must at 
least include life and happiness. 

At this point a practical consideration fully demonstrat- 
ing the importance of this subject as well as proving the 
need of observing it, becomes obvious. If physical im- 
mortality be an element of human destiny the sooner we 
recognize that fact the better. The influence of the mind 
will be found to be the chief factor in the problem ; and 
the traveller in some pathless forest without compass or 
guide, or the mariner on some unknown ocean drifting at 
the will of the wind, might sooner expect to reach a de- 
sired destination than for man individually or collectively 
to attain such an ultimatum without a preconceived pur- 
pose ; while the bare recognition of such a possibility 
would be found doubtless to radically affect many of our 
social institutions. 

It would not be a difficult task to show that fundamen- 
tal defects now exist in our systems of thought growing 
out of misconceived views of human destiny, thus prov- 
ing some other theory rather than the usually accepted 
notions to be true. Instances will suggest themselves to 
the reader, of comparatively recent date, where parents 
have deliberately murdered their innocent children in 
order that they might send them, according to their in- 
sane fancies, from this world of wickedness directly to a 
world of happiness. An assassin strikes down the Presi- 
dent of the United States, and assigns a similar reason 
as an excuse for his dastardly conduct. " I presume," 
said the would-be murderer, " that the President is a 
Christian, and that he will be happier in paradise than 



6 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



here." It may be excusable to inquire wherein, accord- 
ing to the usual theory, was the logic of these murderers 
at fault ? If the innocent daughter of the Pocasset mur- 
derer is happier in heaven than she would have been in 
this world, subject to the influences of poverty, hardship, 
and perhaps crime, is there not some justification for the 
bloody act of her fanatical parent ? When ferocious 
fanatics, urging on the massacre of Beziers, shouted — 

" Kill all ! God will know His own ! " 

from the same stand-point were they not equally con- 
sistent ? 

These extreme cases may serve to bring out more dis- 
tinctly what seems to be the result of a false premise in 
reasoning. To many minds it seems illogical and incon- 
sistent that the economy of this universe should be such 
that a class of beings should be suddenly translated by 
death, which seems to be a loss of power, from a sphere 
where they possess at best limited powers and limited hap- 
piness, to another sphere where they immediately come to 
possess unlimited powers and unlimited happiness ; and 
this seems the more inconsistent when we reflect that w T e 
have no actual knowledge of this second sphere whatever. 
Yet the facts of human aspiration, of organic progress, 
and of the existence of human weakness and defects 
capable of being remedied, impress us with the belief that 
life has something more of significance than the frag- 
mentary existence now known to us. This impression is 
confirmed too by considering the necessary relations of 
mind to the material universe. Without thought — the 



FA V OR ABLE CONSIDER A TIONS. 



7 



highest form in which life manifests itself, — the universe of 
matter, with its endless number of world systems, would 
be practically a blank. An appreciative element, or mind ; 
and an element to be appreciated, or matter, seem to be 
necessary to existence — the one duly proportioned to the 
other. And taking the analogy of our own globe and the 
processes of nature into account, there is certainly reason 
in regarding these planetary systems as so many harvest 
fields of the universe, in which an appreciative class of 
existences are developed akin to man, but of a higher and 
more complete power than man. 



CHAPTER II. 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



The Kind of Evidence Demanded — Personal Power — Classical and Sacred 
History — Bearings of Christianity — Summary of Christ's Life — His Moral 
Teachings Unquestioned— Evidence for the Miraculous— Inviolability of 
Nature— Existence as a Whole — Persistence of Force — Evolution not Uni- 
form—Antecedent Social Conditions — Parallel Philosophy — The Early 
Church — Variations— Claims upon Reason. 



HILE the possibility of a continued life of the kind 



we now experience cannot be denied ; yet, since 
that which is possible admits of being realized under the 
right conditions, the possibility of immortality cannot be 
positively affirmed, except by showing that the conditions 
for its realization have existed, do exist, or may exist 
hereafter. And if these conditions cannot be shown 
completely, then the comparative strength of the argu- 
ment will depend upon the degree in which such condi- 
tions are reached and their existence proven. 

It would be comparatively easy to show that a man by 
observing the known laws of health could reach a very 
great age, say one hundred years ; because well authenti- 
cated instances are known of persons who have attained 
that age. But it will be observed that our data must 
necessarily include other facts than those relating merely 
to the longevity of individuals. We cannot see very far 
into the future, the chances of death by accident are 
many, and the evidence that produces conviction in us 




8 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



9 



that a person is destined to live on unceasingly, must be 
proof that a person has power to do so. 

This idea of personal power appears to have been ap- 
preciated in the earlier ages, and hence men who had be- 
come especially renowned for some quality, as learning, 
piety, or valor, were said in certain cases to have become 
gods, and to have left the earth without suffering death. 
The Greeks gave such accounts of Empedocles, Apollo- 
nius, and some others. Romulus at the close of a long 
and successful reign is said to have ascended to heaven 
in a chariot of fire. Elijah the prophet, it will be remem- 
bered, as narrated in the Scriptures, took a similar leave of 
the earth, and the same record tells us that " Enoch was 
translated that he should not see death. " The religious 
books of Eastern nations, as well as the traditions of some 
tribes of American Indians, afford like accounts. 

These reports, to say the least, are so meagre that they 
can have little or no bearing on our subject. 

It has been argued that this power of immortality was 
attained in the person of Christ. And since his character 
and the wonderful powers claimed for him must constitute 
a valuable support to any argument based upon unques- 
tioned data favoring the present hypothesis, it will be 
consistent at this point to consider the bearings of Chris- 
tianity upon this question, as interpreted in the light of 
recent science. 

There was a child born four years before that period 
known as the Christian era — a child of whom it was said, 
u He was born of a virgin/' This child was born at a re- 
markable period, amid a peculiar people, and in a coun- 



TO THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



try, though of a rugged surface, yet possessing a rare 
climate and soil. Of his boyhood there is little account, 
save that having acquired a taste for theological study, 
he became at an early age well versed in the prevailing 
religious doctrines of his nation. In his early manhood 
he appears to have employed a portion of his time as a 
mechanical laborer. When he had attained the age of 
about thirty years, he began to evince, it is said, certain 
remarkable powers. He is reported to have healed dis- 
eases by the apparent exercise of his will, and on several 
occasions to have restored the dead to life. Having 
asserted that he had power to lay down his own life and 
take it up again, he suffered death to be imposed upon 
him, and rose the third day from the grave. He is re- 
ported to have subsequently passed bodily through the 
walls of a building, and finally, from a concourse of his 
followers, to have disappeared in the heavens. Such is a 
brief summary of the chief events in the life of the founder 
of Christianity. 

To the unbiassed reader these accounts certainly appear 
incredible. They are totally opposed to the general ex- 
perience of mankind, and in their bare outline do not 
differ materially from other marvellous stories of antiquity 
generally considered fabulous. Still that such a child 
was born is incontestably true, and though the assertion 
that he was born of a virgin needs for its confirmation, 
evidence probably stronger than the fact of partheno- 
genesis among insects, 1 yet the accounts of his wonderful 
deeds and powers are so thoroughly incorporated with 

1 See Joseph Cook's Lectures. 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



the record of his life that to simply consider these ac- 
counts false is to leave the problem of Christianity un- 
touched. A rational and satisfactory solution of the 
phenomenon of Christianity should include a careful and 
impartial examination of the evidence supporting these 
accounts. The competency and reliability of the writers, 
the periods at which they severally wrote, and possible 
interpolations and changes in the text, should be consid- 
ered. But this work has been repeatedly and, in several 
instances, thoroughly done. 

Among those favorable to the claims of Christianity, 
who have attempted this work, are the German theologians 
Neander, in " Das Leben Jesu Christi"; Tholuck, in 
" Credibility of the Gospel History "; Frederich Bleek, in 
his contribution to the authenticity of John's Gospel; and 
Constantin Tischendorf, a learned professor of Leipsic, in 
" When were our Gospels Written ? " Among later English 
writers, Dr. Mozley in his Bampton Lectures, Dr. John H. 
Newman in " Two Essays on Miracles," and the Rev. F. 
W. Farrar in " The Witness of History to Christ " may be 
mentioned, Of American writers, Prof. Geo. P. Fisher of 
Yale College, Dr. Philip Schaff of New York, Prof. Calvin 
Stowe, and the Rev. Horace Bushneli have written similar 
works. All of these works may be said to agree in the 
fact that they are apologetic in character, and were mainly 
written to refute the attacks of criticisms adverse to the 
supernatural claims of Christianity, as found in the works 
of Strauss, Baur, Renan, and other authors. They are, it 
is true, open to the objection that the writers were sever- 
ally possessed of a strong bias toward the conclusions 



12 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING, 



they reach ; still it is inconsistent from any point of view 
to suppose that these conclusions are wholly erroneous. 
A recent anonymous publication called " Supernatural Re- 
ligion," a most careful and thorough treatise, though reach- 
ing a conclusion adverse to the supernatural in Christian- 
ity, yet along with the works of Strauss, Baur, and Renan 
does not question the existence of Christ, and, to an 
extent, regards his teachings as historic and authentic, 
says : "We shall probably never be able to determine 
now how far the great Teacher may, through his own 
speculations or misunderstood spiritual utterances, have 
originated the supernatural doctrines subsequently attri- 
buted to him, and by which his whole history and system 
soori became infused. 

* * * * * " Whatever explanation may be 
given, however, it is undeniable that the earliest teaching 
of Jesus recorded in the Gospel which can be regarded in 
any degree as historical, is pure morality, almost, if not 
quite, free from theological dogmas." 1 This guarded state- 
ment, in view of the extreme carefulness of the writer 
throughout, amounts to a strong admission of the authen- 
ticity of Christ's teachings. The same writer speaks more 
openly in the following : " Whilst we retain pure and un- 
impaired the light of Christian morality we are no longer 
bound to believe a theology which outrages reason and 
moral sense." 

From Strauss' " Life of Jesus," of which Dr. A. S. Farrar 
says, "As a specimen of didactic and critical writing it is 
perhaps unrivalled in the German literature," 2 we quote : 

1 " Supernatural Religion," vol. ii, page 485. 

2 " History of Free Thought." 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



13 



" I do not think that the case is so bad as has lately been 
maintained, as that we cannot know for certain of any one 
of the texts which are put into the mouth of Jesus in the 
Gospels whether he really uttered it or not. I believe that 
there are some which we may ascribe to Jesus with all that 
amount of probability beyond which we cannot generally 
go in historical matters, and I have endeavored above to 
explain the signs by which we may recognize such." 1 

There is, then, from the most ultra stand-point and in the 
light of the most rigid criticism, as evinced in the works of 
these two writers, an historic basis for the existence and 
moral doctrines of Christ. 

And in view of this fact it will be sufficient, so far 
as this phase of our subject is concerned, to observe 
that the same records which tell us of the non-miraculous 
and natural in Christ's life also relate the miraculous and 
supernatural ; so that if we accept the one class of events 
as true, historically, we have the same ground for accept- 
ing the other. 

Nevertheless, however strong the historic argument 
may be, the stilling of the tempest by the mere exercise of 
the will, the healing of disease or the raising of the dead by 
such means, are not such unimportant and ordinary matters 
as to be believed on mere verbal statements, arguments, 
suppositions, and explanations. To him who recognizes the 
inviolability of nature's laws, the strongest historical evi- 
dence is utterly impotent to prove a violation of those laws. 
Were nature capricious in her manifestations there could be 
no such thing as an explanation given of any subject ; since 

lil New Life of Jesus." 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



every explanation is but the reduction of a given phenome- 
non to a consistency with facts or truths known to be con- 
sistent among themselves. Without order in the manifes- 
tations of existence, correct judgment and accuracy of 
observation would be alike impossible, and inconceivable 
confusion would exist in mind as in matter. The ground 
of belief in the most cherished doctrine, along with the 
ground of belief in all things else, would be swept away, 
and universal skepticism would be the only logical result. 

Since the accounts of Christ are credible on evidence 
only, and since the credibility of evidence is wholly a mat- 
ter of reason, not only must an adequate explanation of his 
life and doctrines accord with reason, but any construction 
put upon them inconsistent with logic or known facts 
tends, with rational minds, the more strongly to prevent 
belief in him. 

But, in view of the strong historic evidence that Christ 
lived, that he is the author of the doctrines attributed to 
him, and in view of the close relationship which his alleged 
miracles sustain to his teachings as set forth in the records, 
let us consider whether it be not possible, even in accord 
with the order of nature and with human experience that 
Christ should have lived possessing the miraculous nature 
and performing the wonderful deeds ascribed to him. Only 
by reasoning from the known can we hope to attain the 
unknown ; and though the revelation of that mode of con- 
sciousness wherein existence is discerned is more wonderful 
than any specific miracle — though existence is a miracle 
with which no special mode of existence whether possible 
or conceivable would bear comparison, — yet that fact 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



15 



proves nothing. Nor can we hope to substantiate the occur- 
rence of an unusual phenomenon by citing the occurrence 
of a more unusual one, unless between the two some relation 
can be shown to exist. If the miraculous deeds in question 
do not accord with specific modes of existence as known to 
mankind generally, may they not accord with existence as 
a whole ? Human history and human experience constitute 
but a point in duration ; and though we cannot conceive of 
the capricious violation of nature's laws as a possibility, it 
were unphilosophic to assert that these laws do only em- 
brace the facts and experiences within the ken of man 
generally. 

Let us notice a certain order of facts. To-day we find 
a great variety of modes of life on the earth. Man in 
a degree civilized and cultured ; man ignorant and super- 
stitious ; man nomadic and barbaric ; finally, man in the 
lowest degree sensual, eating the flesh of his brother man 
and practically a brute. We find innumerable varieties of 
lower animal life, ranging through as many degrees of intel- 
ligence as degrees of form. We find vegetable life in still 
greater profusion and variety. This state of things did not 
always exist : there was a time when barbaric man was the 
highest type ; a still earlier time when the gross savage was 
the only human species. At a still earlier epoch man did 
not exist at all, the highest type of life being akin to spe- 
cies of the lower vertebrates now existent. And thus we 
find, going backward in time, there was a period when no 
life existed at all upon the earth ; low forms at first ap- 
peared of no distinct type, then higher forms, and thus on 
in a progressive series did life manifest itself until, as its 



1 6 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



highest representative, man comparatively civilized and cul- 
tured appeared. And what do these facts signify ? It is a 
simple axiom of mathematics, that two constantly diverging 
lines must ultimately be separated by an infinite distance, 
and unless we suppose that this progress is now to cease we 
must conclude that vastly higher manifestations of life 
shall appear in the future than are evinced in present 
civilization and culture. But if we put any faith in the 
inferences of science we cannot conclude that this progress 
is now to cease. Force — the one force existing in and 
through all things, which cannot be destroyed — -persists to 
the production of an equilibrium between the internal and 
external conditions of life ; /. e., to the production of perfect 
life. Since the highest manifestation of life known to us 
is that exhibited in consciousness or the partial comprehen- 
sion of life by itself, a complete knowledge of the laws and 
conditions of life, as well as the power to apply and use such 
knowledge, must at some time evidently be reached. Now 
is it not possible that this equilibrium between the internal 
and external factors of human existence — the attainment 
of the knowledge of the laws of life and the power to use 
such knowledge — was reached in the person of Christ ? 
Three considerations tend to this conlusion. First, the 
fact that evolution does not act uniformly or constantly to 
produce higher types. Says Spencer : " Evolution is com- 
monly conceived to imply in every thing an intrinsic ten- 
dency to become something higher, but this is an erroneous 
conception of it. In all cases it is determined by the co- 
operation of inner and outer factors. * *, * Hence, 
the truth, that while for immeasurable periods some types 



I 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



17 



have neither advanced nor receded, and while in other 
types there has been further evolution, there are many 
types in which retrogression has happened/' This being 
the case it is quite consistent that one perfect being 
should antecede by some thousands of years a race of 
perfect beings. 

Secondly, this conclusion is supported by the character 
of the social conditions antecedent to Christ's appearance, 
and under which his advent occurred. The Dark Ages 
may be said to constitute the hollow between two great 
waves of progress, the one culminating some centuries be- 
fore the downfall of the Western Empire, and to which 
Egyptian, Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and Roman civiliza- 
tions were tributary; the other, we may trust, just beginning 
to accumulate dimensions and force. Now we cannot deny 
that the former undulations may have reached heights far 
above our present status. While we even now make the 
books which have come down to us from this former epoch 
of civilization, — books scriptural and classical, — the data, 
largely, for thought and action, it is not improbable that 
practical workers of that period, making nature the basis of 
their investigations, may have reached much higher ground 
than has yet been attained in this period. True, this sup- 
position could not be made to include progress in the 
mechanic arts, nor the accumulation and classification of 
stores of knowledge, nor many things relating purely to 
social advancement. But if the relation of man as an 
individual — the relation of man. in his mental and physical 
aspects, to nature and to existence — be regarded, the claim 
that much higher ground was or may have been reached, 



1 8 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



is a consistent one. Our knowledge now is largely a mat- 
ter of words valuable only from a social point of view. 
We have, it is true, the names of the parts and the func- 
tions of many of the parts of the human body ; we may 
know something of the relations existing between body and 
mind ; but we do not know the possible results of a system 
of right living most favorable to the development of this 
body and mind. The general fact of great social progress 
antecedent to the advent of Christ, warrants us in supposing 
that many schemes of morals had been tried with reference 
to attaining the greatest results in the case of a man individ- 
ually; and history supports the supposition. To be specific, 
one of the doctrines held by the Hebrew fathers was that 
of a continued existence on earth simply. Had Adam, 
their great ancestor, not fallen into sin they supposed that 
he and his posterity would have lived forever ; and who- 
ever should attain righteousness — the primitive, perfect 
state of Adam, — they supposed w r ould so live. " The soul 
that sinneth it shall die," saith the prophet Ezekiel; " but 
if the wicked will turn from all his sins that he hath com- 
mitted and keep all my statutes, and do that which is lawful 
and right, he shall surely live, he shall not die. * * * 
For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith 
the Lord God ; wherefore turn and live ye." Another 
ancient doctrine of the Jews was that of the Messiah, or 
Anointed One, who should come as their king and deliverer. 
u The Lord thy God " says the chieftain Moses, " will 
raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy 
brethren, like unto me." Without reference to other ele- 
ments of the Hebrew faith, here is evidence of an unusual 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



19 



belief exerting its influence directly and hereditarily- 
through a number of centuries, in one particular urging 
individuals to the attainment of perfect life, and in another 
impressing itself on the awakening consciousness of the 
Hebrew youth with the question, " Am I this Messiah who 
shall free God's chosen people from the evils to which they 
are constantly subjected ?" Admitting that the Jews were 
sincere in their faith, this unusual doctrine must have been 
productive of an unusual result. That they were sincere 
to fanaticism, is shown by the scarce traces of environing 
civilizations existing in their religious literature; while 
as a fact they were at one time tributary to Egypt, at an- 
other to Babylonia and Persia, at another to Macedonia, 
and finally to Rome ; and were from their geographical 
position and enterprising proclivities the focus of all that 
intellectual and social growth. The three chief sects of the 
Jews, the formal Pharisees, the sceptical Sadducees, and 
" the practical, virtuous Essenes," 1 fairly represent the 
stages of development resulting from the clashing and de- 
composition of these national creeds and doctrines — and of 
which Christ was the culmination. 

The third and still more convincing consideration, 
however, must be found in the doctrines said to have 
been entertained and taught by Christ himself. As of the 
national intellectuality, so of the individual. Christ was 
undoubtedly a Jew from his early training, but he so far 
outgrew his Jewish tenets that his followers, surveying his 
character from the narrow stand-point of Judaism, fre- 
quently misunderstood him ; thus his biographers, in 



1 Philo. 



20 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



order to make the royal claims they assume for him con- 
form to Jewish law and tradition, indulge in what, secu- 
larly speaking, would be termed a bull j for, though re- 
counting the " dream " of his miraculous conception, they 
severally quote the male line of his ancestry. 

Christ taught, " He that is perfect shall be as his mas- 
ter," and enjoined his followers, " Be ye therefore perfect 
as your Father in heaven is perfect"; and perfection — 
perfect life- — is a salient doctrine of evolution. Indeed it 
may be safely asserted that the principal doctrines of 
evolution relating to human life individually, and to in- 
dividual and human progress, were all anticipated in the 
teachings which Christ promulgated. As proof of this 
statement let us compare extracts from the philosophy of 
evolution, as set forth by one of its leading exponents, 
with Christianity, as expressed in the words of its founder, 
the extracts embracing prominent topics. 

The Knowledge of God. 



EVOLUTION. 

Our own and all other ex- 
istence is a mystery abso- 
lutely and forever beyond 
our comprehension. 

The consciousness of an 
inscrutable Power manifested 
to us through all phenom- 
ena has been growing ever 
clearer. 

The Power which the uni- 



CHRISTIANITY. 

No man hath seen God 
at any time. 

Ye have neither heard his 
voice at any time nor seen 
his shape. 

No man hath ascended up 
to heaven, but he that came 
down from heaven, even the 
Son of man who is in 
heaven. 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



21 



verse manifests to us is ut- 
terly inscrutable. 

The reality underlying ap- 
pearances is totally and for- 
ever inconceivable by us. 

Whoever contemplates 
the relation in which it 
stands to the truths of 
science in general will see 
that this truth, transcending 
demonstration is, the per- 
sistence of force. 

And this persistence of 
the universe is the persist- 
ence of that unknown Cause, 
Power, or Force which is 
manifested to us through all 
phenomena. 



No man knoweth the Son 
but the Father ; neither 
knoweth any man the Father 
save the Son and to whom 
the Son shall reveal him. 

God is a spirit. 

A spirit hath not flesh and 
bones as ye see me have. 

The words which I speak 
unto you they are spirit and 
they are life. 



God's Relation to Man. 



Whoever hesitates to utter 
that which he thinks the 
highest truth lest it be too 
much in advance of his time, 
may reassure himself by 
looking at his acts from an 
impersonal point of view. * 
* * He like every other man 
may properly consider him- 



Call no man your Father 
upon earth, for one is your 
Father who is in heaven. 

My doctrine is not mine 
but his that sent me. If any 
man do his will he shall know 
of the doctrine whether it be 
of God or whether I speak of 
myself. 



22 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



self as one of the myriad 
agencies through whom 
works the unknown Cause ; 
and when the unknown 
Cause produces in him a cer- 
tain belief he is thereby au- 
thorized to profess and act 
out that belief. 



It is not ye that speak but 
the spirit of your Father 
which speaketh in you. 

He whom God hath sent 
speaketh the words of God ; 
for God giveth not the spirit 
by measure. 



Morality. 



Granted that we are chiefly 
interested in ascertaining 
what is relatively right, it 
still follows that we must 
first consider what is abso- 
lutely right ; since the one 
conception presupposes the 
other. 

If it is true that pure rec- 
titude prescribes a system of 
things far too good for men 
as they are, it is not less true 
that mere expediency does 
not of itself tend to establish 
a system of things any better 
than that which exists. 



Be ye therefore perfect as 
your Father who is in 
heaven is perfect. 

Seek ye fiist the kingdom 
of God and his righteoits?iess 
and all these things shall be 
added unto you. 

Lay not up for yourselves 
treasures upon earth where 
moth and rust doth corrupt, 
and where thieves break 
through and steal. But lay 
up for yourselves treasures in 
heaven, where neither moth 
nor rust doth corrupt, and 
where thieves do not break 
through nor steal. 



Immortality. 



Were there no changes in 
the environment but such as 



If a man keep my saying 
he shall never see death. 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT, 



23 



the organism had adapted 
changes to meet and were it 
never to fail in the efficiency 
with which it met them, there 
would be eternal existence 
and universal knowledge. 

Heaven, 



Whosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die. 

I have power to lay down 
my own life and take it up 
again. 



Thus from the persistence 
of force * * * we finally 
draw from it a warrant for 
the belief, that evolution 
can end only in the estab- 
lishment of the greatest per- 
fection and most complete 
happiness. 



So shall it be at the end of 
the world * * * Then shall 
the righteous shine forth as 
the sun in the kingdom of 
their Father. 

The kingdom of God is 
within you. 

Blessed are the meek, for 
they shall inherit the earth. 

The Will. 



Freedom of the will, did it 
exist, would be at variance 
with the beneficent necessity 
displayed in the organism 
and its environment. * * * 
There would be a retarda- 
tion of that grand progress 
which is bearing humanity 
onward to a higher intelli- 
gence and a nobler char- 
acter. 



No man can come to me 
except the Father who hath 
sent me draw him. 

The Son can do nothing of 
himself, but what he seeth 
the Father do. 

No man can come unto me 
except it were given unto 
him of my Father. 

After this manner there- 
fore pray ye : * * * Thy 
will be done in earth, as it is 
in heaven. 



24 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



Chastity. 



Everywhere and always 
evolution is antagonistic to 
procreative dissolution. 

The particular kind of 
further evolution which man 
is hereafter to undergo, is 
one which, more than any 
other, may be expected to 
cause a decline in his powers 
of reproduction. 



There be eunuchs that 
have made themselves eu- 
nuchs for the kingdom of 
heaven's sake. He that is 
able to receive it let him re- 
ceive it. 

f Christ having been") 
J asked when his king- [ 
1 dom should come, an- j 

lowered : J 
When two shall be one, 
and that which is without as 
that which is within ; and 
the male with the female 
neither male nor female. 



Faith. 



The persistence of the 
connection between the 
states of consciousness is 
proportionate to the persist- 
ence of the connection be- 
tween the agencies to which 
they answer. * * * The law 
enunciated is * * * the law 
to which psychical changes 
conform more and more as 
intelligence becomes higher, 
but which can be perfectly 
conformed to only by per- 
fect intelligence. 



Have faith in God. For 
verily I say unto you, Whoso- 
ever shall say unto this moun- 
tain, Be ye removed and be 
thou cast into the sea, and 
shall not doubt in his heart 
but shall believe those things 
which he saith shall come to 
pass, he shall have whatso- 
ever he saith. 

If thou canst believe, all 
things are, possible to him 
that believeth. 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



25 



Action. 



There is a wide difference 
between the formal assent 
men give to a proposition 
they cannot gainsay, and the 
efficient belief which pro- 
duces active conformity to it. 
Not by precept though heard 
daily ; not by example unless 
it is followed ; but only by 
action often caused by the 
related feelings can a moral 
habit be formed. 



Not every one that saith 
unto me, Lord, Lord, shall 
enter into the kingdom of 
heaven ; but he that doeth 
the will of my Father who 
is in heaven. 

Whosoever heareth these 
sayings of mine and doeth 
them, I will liken him to a 
wise man who built his 
house upon a rock. * * * 
And every one that heareth 
these sayings of mine and 
doeth them not, shall be lik- 
ened unto a foolish man 
who built his house upon 
the sand. 



Rule of Human Relation. 



If the dictate, " Live for 
self," is wrong in one way, 
the opposite dictate " Live 
for others," is wrong in an- 
other way. The rational 
dictate is, " Live for self and 
others." 

Instead of senselessly reit- 
erating in catechisms and 



Therefore all things what- 
soever ye would that men 
should do to you, do ye even 
so to them. 

Love your enemies, bless 
them that curse you, do good 
to them that hate you, and 
pray for them who despite- 
f ully use you and persecute 



26 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



Church services the duty of 
doing good to those that hate 
us, while an undoubted be- 
lief in the duty of retaliation 
is implied by our parliamen- 
tary debates, the articles in 
our journals, and the conver- 
sations over our tables, it 
would be wiser and more 
manly to consider how far 
the first should go in mitiga- 
tion of the last 



you ; that ye may be the chil- 
dren of your Father who is 
in heaven. 



The Sabbath. 



The child of Puritanic 
parents, brought up in the 
belief that Sabbath-breaking 
brings after it all kinds of 
transgressions, * * * is 
somewhat perplexed in after 
years when acquaintance 
with more of his countrymen 
has shown him exemplary 
lives joined with non-ob- 
servance of the Sunday. 



The Sabbath was made for 
man and not man for the 
Sabbath ; therefore the Son 
of man is Lord even of the 
Sabbath-day. 

If a man on the Sabbath- 
day receive circumcision, 
that the law of Moses should 
not be broken, are ye angry 
at me, because I have made 
a man every whit whole on 
the Sabbath-day ? 

It is lawful to do well on 
the Sabbath-day. 

That there is an agreement and for the most part a very 
close agreement displayed in these parallel passages no one 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



27 



can deny; but there is also an important difference — a dif- 
ference upon which our argument must depend quite as 
much as upon the points of similarity. This difference has 
reference to the stand-points or premises from which these 
two schemes of thought evidently proceed. While the one 
rests upon the data of experience, the other is based upon 
the assumed fact of a controlling intelligence. If one 
foundation is terrestrial and human, the other may be re- 
garded as celestial and divine. While both systems agree 
that no man knoweth the Father, Christ assumes for him- 
self that he does know the Father, and that he is 6 jnovoZ 
yavoS, the only born son of God. While both agree that 
human actions are the consequence of an antecedent om- 
nipotence, Christ assumes a superiority for himself as the 
result of this common antecedent Cause. Though both 
assert that right must be absolute in its esssential 
nature, evolution advocates expediency as a matter 
of practice, while Christ's injunction is " Be ye perfect." 
While evolution claims the possibility of an endless 
life, Christ assumes the actuality of an endless life. 
And thus, though starting from opposite stand-points, these 
two systems are seen to coincide and support each other in 
regard to future happiness, to the human will, in regard to 
the exercise of chastity, of faith, individual activity, and 
correct social relations; save that the former contemplates 
more closely the immediate, the practical and the earthly, 
and the latter has reference to the ultimate, the attainable, 
and the heavenly. Both systems agree in opposing the 
purely conventional : thus, of observing the Sabbath, 
Christ's doctrine is, It is lawful to do well on the Sabbath; 



28 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING, 



it is lawful to do evil at no time. Hence all days are alike 
as regards his system, and the observance of Sunday is made 
to depend rather upon physiological and moral grounds 
than on Jewish law and tradition ; which accords with 
the apparent fact that no one revolution of the earth on its 
axis is performed in a more sacred portion of time than 
another. 

As regards the essential doctrine of immortality, evolu- 
tion, starting from the secular stand-point, demonstrates 
with all the accuracy of scientific truth so far as known, that 
the true end of human existence is human perfectionment ; 
while Christ asserted that perfection, a state he assumed for 
himself, included the power of an endless life. To the 
stage of perfection Christ assigned various terms, as heaven, 
the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, This is 
shown by comparing the following passages: " If thou 
wilt be perfect, go and sell what thou hast and give to the 
poor and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." " A rich 
man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven'' " It 
is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than 
for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." 

Christ's doctrine of a future life seems to include two 
phases, applicable to two classes of individuals ; which 
doctrines may be best shown by selections from his own 
words. 

i st. Immediate Immortality, of which he was the type. 
" As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to 
the Son to have life in himself." " He that heareth my 
words and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting 
life." "The Father gave me a commandment what I 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



2 9 



should say and what I should speak. And I know that 
his commandment is life everlasting." " If a man keep my 
saying he shall never see death." "I have power to lay 
down my own life and take it up again. As the living 
Father hath sent me and I live by the Father, so he that 
eateth {i.e., comprehendeth) me, even he shall live by me." 
" He that heareth my words and believeth on him that sent 
me hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condem- 
nation ; but is passed from death unto life." " Whosoever 
liveth and believeth in me shall never die." 

2d. The Resurrection. " He that findeth his life 
shall lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall 
find it." " He that believeth in me, though he were dead, 
yet shall he live." " No man can come unto me except it 
were given unto him of my Father. And this is the will 
of him that sent me, that every one who seeth the Son 
and believeth on him may have everlasting life ; and I will 
raise him up at the last day. Marvel not at this ; for the 
hour is coming in which all that are in their graves shall 
hear his voice and shall come forth : they that have done 
good, unto the resurrection of life ; and they that have done 
evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." " There are last 
which shall be first, and first which shall be last." 

The method and manner by which perfection is attain- 
able is shown to some extent in the following : 

" If ye continue in my word then are ye my disciples 
indeed ; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
make you free." " Go ye and learn what that meaneth : I 
will have mercy and not sacrifice." " Seek ye first the 
kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things 



30 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



(/. e., life, wealth and friends) shall be added unto you." 
" The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. " " So 
is the kingdom of God as if a man should put seed into 
the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and 
the seed should spring and grow up he knoweth not how." 

The parables of The Sower, The Lighted Candle, The 
Tares, The Mustard Seed, The Leaven, The Treasure, 
The Pearls, The Net, The Unforgiving Debtor, The Good 
Shepherd, The Importunate Neighbor, The Rich Fool, 
The Great Supper, The Lost Sheep, The Lost Silver, The 
Prodigal Son, The Unjust Steward, The Rich Man and 
Lazarus, The Unjust Judge, The Pharisee and the Pub- 
lican, The Hired Laborers, The Ten Servants, The Vine- 
yard, The Wedding Garment, The Ten Virgins, The Tal- 
ents, and The Man Taking a Far Journey, all illustrate 
phases of the same doctrine, showing the method and 
manner of attaining, a character of perfection, — heaven, — 
the kingdom of God. 

The meagre incidents narrated of Christ's own life sup- 
port his doctrine of perfection. In his career he is repre- 
sented at one time as saying " Behold I cast out devils and 
do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day I shall 
be perfected." At one time he says, " My Father is greater 
than I "; and subsequently, "I and my Father are one." 
And after his resurrection he is represented as saying, " All 
power is given unto me in heaven and in earth." 

While urging all to attain the kingdom of God, there is 
evidence that at the time of his ministry Christ regarded 
himself as the only one who had attained this perfect life, 
as shown in the following passages: 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



31 



" I am the light of the world ; he that followeth me 
shall have the way of life/' " Not that any man hath 
seen the Father, save he which is of God ; he hath seen 
the Father." 

" No man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that 
came down from heaven, even the son of man who is in 
heaven." 

" Except a man be born (yewr/OP)) again, he cannot 
see the kingdom of God." 

" God so loved the world that he gave his only born 
(fxovoyevr/) Son, that whosoever believeth in him should 
hot perish, but have everlasting life." 

"All things are delivered to me of my Father ; and no 
man knoweth who the Son is but the Father ; and who 
the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son will 
reveal him." 

That the doctrine of an endless life was held by the 
early Church is testified to by Lucian, who in the second 
century speaks thus derisively of the Christians: " The 
wretched people have persuaded themselves that they are 
altogether immortal, and will live forever ; therefore they 
despise death, and many of them meet it of their own ac- 
cord." This statement, made, as Neander 1 tells us, as a 
sarcasm on Paul's preaching of the resurrection, is seen to 
accord with Christ's twofold doctrine of immortality. 

It is fairly proven, perhaps, that certain of the records 
from which these statements of Christian doctrine have 
been taken, were written more than a century after the ad- 
vent of Jesus. It is certain that the writers disagree in 

Meander's " Ch. Hist. page 94. 



32 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



regard to the same matters ; as in regard to the genealo- 
gies, and inscription on the cross. Neither is it entirely 
certain who their several authors were. But suppose that 
his biographers in some cases mistook his meaning : thus, 
three tell of casting out devils, while the fourth does not ; 
suppose that fabrications and exaggerations crept into the 
traditions concerning him before they were committed to 
writing. These things will signify nothing if there be 
found underneath all the dross a system of truth in perfect 
accord with scientific deductions and known facts. 

The superstitious tales, fallacious reasoning, and disa- 
greements of the various writers will then constitute a 
stronger evidence of the truth of Christianity, than if the 
various accounts agreed perfectly and the superstitions and 
fallacies were left out. For where witnesses agree there 
may be collusion, and where they make events subordinate 
to their own theories there may be fabrication ; but diver- 
sity in the testimony of witnesses disproves collusion, while 
weak and inefficient explanations of facts, though lowering 
the intellectual standing of a witness, disprove fabrication. 
This last consideration would strengthen the supposition 
that the writers were deceived, in case it should be found 
that Christ's doctrines and means for the performance of 
his deeds were inconsistent with known facts ; and hence 
it appears that science must constitute the strongest evi- 
dence of the truth or falsity of Christianity. But it should 
be borne in mind that Christ's method was rigidly scien- 
tific. This is shown in such statements as the following : 
" By their fruits ye shall know them." " These signs shall 
follow them that believe," etc. " The works that I do in 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



33 



my Father's name they bear witness of me." " He that be- 
lieveth on me the works that I do shall he do also ; and 
greater works than these shall he do ; because I go to my 
Father." 

The physical conditions under which Christ is said to 
have exerted his miraculous powers do not appear to have 
been essentially different from existing conditions ; and 
why a man, the external conditions being the same, should 
at a certain period exert a certain power of giving life and 
controlling the tempest, and why no man can exert the 
same power now to the same end, is mysterious. But if it 
be shown that under existing conditions the same wonder- 
ful results might be attained as Christ attained, providing 
that the same course were pursued as he pursued, the pos- 
sibility of his having possessed miraculous power must be 
admitted. Admitting that in the case of every man " All 
actions whatever must be determined by those psychical 
connections which experience has generated, either in the 
life of the individual or in that general antecedent life of 
which the accumulated results are organized in his consti- 
tution," and it follows that Christ's actions, whatever they 
were, were immediately determined by the ideas, feelings, 
and motives which filled his mind. Again, on the supposi- 
tion that the ideas and motives of Christ differed from 
those of other men, and were also more correct, if it be ad- 
mitted that the force constituting life becomes great ac- 
cording to the more perfect adjustment of internal with 
external relations, we must admit that the force constitut- 
ing his life was essentially greater than that exhibited in 
the lives of other men. , 



34 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



The cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith, when fairly 
interpreted, is the doctrine of ato//<nnent, of becoming per- 
fect as the Father, and one with him. Considering the 
diverse constructions which have been put upon Christ's 
mission and work, it is a little remarkable that there are 
no passages attributed to him in the New Testament irrec- 
oncilable with this doctrine. Supposing him to have suc- 
cessfully carried out his own doctrine, there is a meaning to 
such expressions as " I have overcome the world," "I have 
power to lay down my own life and take it up again." 
There is a meaning to Christ's resurrection — it is an evi- 
dence of power in the perfected Being to withstand death 
even when subjected to its ordinary causes. There is a 
meaning to the resurrection of Lazarus — it is an evidence 
of power in the perfected Being, not only to preserve his 
own life, but to renew or reorganize the life of the dead. 
If this seems fanciful it is certainly consistent as an in- 
ference. 

It would appear unfortunate in one respect that a per- 
fect being, with powers which we deem miraculous, should 
have existed in an age so abounding in accounts of the 
marvellous and so indifferent to discriminating between 
true and false wonders. Yet individual development 
must precede social evolution, and admitting the possi- 
bility of such ah existence, there is more reason for 
supposing such a personage to arise where such possibility 
is believed in, than elsewhere ; for humanity in its higher 
developments always works to an ideal, and an ideal 
carried through successive generations becomes an effi- 
cient cause. No man can ever expect to awake and find 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



35 



himself perfect without a prior conception of what per- 
fection is. 

Should sound criticism strip from the gospel narratives 
all the marvels ; should the star in the east, the wonderful 
voice at the baptism, and many other wonderful matters 
reported as having occurred before his birth, during his 
active ministry, or after his resurrection be discarded as 
contrary to reason ; yet, as has been shown, the existence 
of such discrepancies would serve to strengthen the 
probability of the occurrence of things which accord 
with his cardinal doctrines as supported by science. And 
discrepancies of this kind with entire consistency could 
be referred to those things of which he said to his fol- 
lowers "ye cannot bear them now." 

Had Christ not declared himself the son of man alike 
with all other men ; the son of God alike with all other 
men, differing only in the degree of his sonship ; if he 
had not urged that the truth of his doctrines should be 
proven by the attainment of knowledge and powers equal 
to his own ; had he not declared that greater things even 
than he did should be performed by those who should 
believe in him ; were not the evidences of such belief 
comparatively wanting at present ; was not man now very 
imperfect in all respects and illy adapted to his habitat ; 
and finally did not Christ's doctrine accord not only with 
human aspirations universally but in its general aspects 
with a philosophy perhaps the most consistent with 
known facts of any ever proposed, — if it were not for 
these things the discrepancies in the accounts concerning 
Christ would tend to destroy rational belief in him. But 



56 THE POSSIBILITY OF XOT DYIXG. 



would the perfect man have a more rational doctrine than 
that of Christ ? Or would the perfect man do less won- 
derful or less benignant deeds than he did ? 

It might be affirmed that the doctrine of perfection 
was not an unusual or exceptional doctrine among the 
ancients ; that Plato. Aristotle, and other philosophers 
held to a similar idea, and that a shadowy notion of this 
kind has prevailed among men through all time. This is 
no doubt true, but such a doctrine has never been held 
as a national doctrine operating on a race for a number 
of centuries except among the Tews. And if we except 
the one case of Christ there would be little difficulty in 
showing that at all times and places this particular idea 
has been so overburdened and interwoven with false 
notions as to have been, in its full sense, inoperative. 

There are in the teachings of the early disciples and 
followers of Christ, both traces of this doctrine and evi- 
dences of such a variety of other ideas interwoven, as to 
account for the fact that the former as an effective cause 
tending to the elevation of the race became valueless. 
Even St. Paul, although he alludes to the kingdom of 
God, and preaches that " Christ is the end of the law for 
righteousness to every one that believeth," though he 
asserts that "the last enemy to be destroyed is death/' yet 
he seems to have amalgamated Judaism with Christianity 
in his doctrines of sacrifice, substitutional expiation, and 
grace. Though St. Peter argues that men 14 might be 
partakers of the divine nature," and that " Christ also 
suffered for us leaving us an example," yet it is quite 
impossible to reconcile his view of the underworld with 
modern research or reasoning. 



THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT. 



37 



And if thus early in its career Christianity began to 
vary from its original stem, how great was that variance 
when Gnosticism and Paganism in its various forms came 
into contact with it ! So far from being the way of 
life — Christ was but a name, a pretext for the commis- 
sion of the most atrocious crimes and cruelties. From 
being a religion of nature with God the father and ruler of 
all, and the kingdom of God a thing to be developed 
in man through progress in all things, Christianity in the 
earlier stages came to be regarded as including many of 
the myths of Judaism and the Pagan systems, as teach- 
ing the existence of a hell under the earth, a heaven in 
the air, and a clearly pronounced anthropomorphic ruler 
of both. The rebound from this grossness caused the 
complete separation of Christianity and nature, and it is 
a lamentable fact that the prevailing sects of to-day 
ignore the study of nature as quite unnecessary to a 
conformity with Christ's teachings. 

Interpreted in the light of evolution and science Chris- 
tianity presents very strong claims upon human reason. 
The objection of the historical critic that "No just notion 
of the true nature of history is possible without a percep- 
tion of the inviolability of the chain of finite causes and 
the impossibility of miracles, " is at once turned aside. 
Christianity as thus interpreted, so far as Christ's miracles 
are counterparts of his doctrine, appears as the outgrowth 
of a scheme of life toward which evolution declares all 
humanity to be tending. 

From this stand-point the mystery enveloping the per- 
son of Christ in his human and divine relations is swept 



38 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



away ; Trinitarianism and Unitarianism coalesce ; Chris- 
tianity is seen to be entirely consistent with the fact of a 
material universe ; according fully with human hopes and 
aspirations, and presenting definite ideas of the future 
life ; thus strengthening our faith in the power of the 
heroic son of man who said : " I am the resurrection and 
the life ; he that believeth in me though he were dead 
yet shall he live, and he that liveth and believeth in me 
shall never die." 



CHAPTER III. 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. — ITS CAUSE AND EFFECTS. 

Living Forever — Objections — Myths and Legends— Poetry and Argument- 
Suffering, Sorrow, and Ennui— Sour Grapes— The Desire Varies as Life 
Varies— No Feeling or Faculty Free from it— A Parallelogram of Forces— 
The Heavens Believed in— Stoicism — Religious Founders — The Instinct 
of Immortality— The Logical Sequence — Mind and Brain — Unknown Pos- 
sibilities. 

T S it desirable to live ? If present time and immediate 
existence only are regarded, nearly all persons answer 
this question affirmatively. But if the question be 
framed so as to include the infinite prolongation of natural 
life, or put in the form — is it desirable to live forever ? we 
shall find that many have seen fit to reply in the negative. 
Volumes of imaginative fancies, of poetry, and argument 
could be compiled tending to show the folly of such a 
desire, and the misery which would necessarily result to 
man from an existence unceasingly and eternally pro- 
longed. The student of classical literature is familiar 
with the myth of Tithonus, a mortal whom Jupiter 
endowed with immortality. Old age grew upon him and 
he became, 

" A white-haired shadow roaming like a dream 
The ever silent spaces of the East," 

only glad to have Jove take back his gift and permit him 
to die. 

39 



40 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYIXG. 



"In a certain lake in Munster, Ireland, it is said there 
were two islands : into the first death could never enter, 
but age and sickness and the weariness of life and the 
paroxysms of fearful suffering were all known there, and 
they did their work till the inhabitants, tired of their im- 
mortality, learned to look upon the opposite island as 
upon a haven of repose ; they launched their barks upon 
its gloomy waters, they touched its shores, and were at 
rest." 1 The ceaseless dangers and calamities encoun- 
tered by Cartaphilus, the Wandering Jew, a legend which 
has formed the basis of so many works of fiction, pos- 
sesses a similar import. Readers of " Gulliver's Travels " 
will remember the sad picture of the old Struldbrugs^ in 
the kingdom of Luggnagg, to whom an endless existence 
was joined with an ever-increasing degree of feebleness 
and imbecility. 

In these fictions are set forth as incidental to a contin- 
ued existence the evils of old age, disease, and suffering. 
The same general objections with a little more imagina- 
tive coloring may be noticed in the hymn beginning, 

1 1 1 would not live alway, I ask not to stay 
Where storm after storm rises dark o'er the way ; 
The few lurid mornings that dawn on us here, 
Are enough for life's woes, full enough for its cheer." 

Another kind of objection is contained in the following : 

" For what live ever here ? — with laboring step 
To tread our former footsteps ? pace the round 
Eternal? to climb life's worn, heavy wheel, 
Which draws up nothing new ? to beat and beat • 
The beaten track ? to surfeit on the same 
And yawn our joys ? " 

1 Lecky's " History of European Morals." 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



41 



This apprehension of life-weariness constitutes the 
lesson to be drawn from Hawthorne's " Septimius Fel- 
ton," wherein the hero represents to his girl-friend Sybil 
the beauties and pleasures of a continued life, with the 
result only of making her feel an intense disgust for the 
monotony and ennui which she conceived such a life 
must necessarily induce. The same thought is expressed 
by Lucretius : 

" Why are we then so fond of mortal life 
Beset with dangers and maintained with strife ? 
A life which all our cares can never save ; 
One fate attends us, and one common grave. 
Besides, we tread but a perpetual round ; 
We ne'er strike out but beat the former ground; 
And the same maukish joys in the same track are found. 

Hi i£ 5fc ❖ ❖ * 5fc 

Suppose thou art not broken yet with years, 

Yet still the self-same scene of things appears 

And would be ever, could'st thou ever live ; 

For life is still but life, there's nothing new to give." 1 

Suffering, sorrow, and sameness in our experiences are 
not, as might be supposed, the only objections offered to 
an existence indefinitely prolonged. Various other 
reasons have been urged against the desirableness of 
such a life, either in connection with these objections or 
independently. Thus says one writer : " Take away from 
man all that is dependent upon or interlinked with the 
appointment of death, and it would make such fundamental 
alterations of his constitution and relations that he would 
no longer be man. It would leave us almost wholly a 

1 " De Rerum Natura," Lib. III., Dryden's Trans. 



4-2 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



different race. If it is a divine boon that men should 
be, then death is a good to us ; for it enables us to be 
men. Without it there would neither be husband and 
wife, nor parent and child, nor family hearth and altar ; 
nor indeed would hardly any thing be as it is now." 
Unless we admit the implication that things are now in 
their most desirable condition, this argument, it may be 
remarked, is not a powerful one. The same writer fails 
into the ordinary line of argument as he continues : " The 
existent phenomena of nature and the soul would com- 
prise all. And when the jaded individual, having mastered 
and exhausted this finite sum, looked in vain for any thing 
new or further, the world would be a hateful dungeon to 
him and life an awful doom." 1 It is a question whether 
the individual who should master even this " finite sum " 
would appear " jaded" or the reverse. The " dying 
alchemist " is represented by the poet as entertaining a 
similar thought, though a higher conception of human 
capabilities. 

* Aye — were not man to die 
He were too mighty for this narrow sphere ! 
Had he but time to brood on knowledge here, — ■ 

Could he but train his eye, — 
Might he but wait the mystic word and hour, 
Only his maker would transcend his power ! " 

By far the greatest number of arguments opposed to a 
continuous immortality, however, are based on a supposed 
superiority of a future spiritual life over the present. 

A majority of our race do appear to entertain a covert 
contempt for the present mode of existence and an 

1 Alger ; " Critical History of a Future Life." 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE, 



43 



inconceivable confidence in a future unknown mode. 
Matter, per se, seems to be regarded as of entirely too 
gross a character to constitute the substance of an end- 
less mode of being. Says a well-known poet : 

" Death is the crown of life ! 
Were death denied, poor man would live in vain ; 
Were death denied, to live would not be life. 
Death wounds to cure ; we fall, — we rise, — we reign ! 
Spring from our fetters, fasten in the skies, 
Where blooming Eden withers in our sight. 
Death gives us more than was in Eden lost ; — 
This king of terrors is the prince of peace." 

Says another writer : " Death, the last and most dreadful 
of all evils, is so far from being one, that it is the infal- 
lible cure for all others — 

" To die is landing on some silent shore, 
Where billows never beat nor tempests roar ; 
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 't is o'er. 

But was it an evil ever so great, it could not be remedied 
but by one much greater, which is, by living forever ; by 
which means our wickedness, unrestrained by the prospect 
of a future state, would grow so unsupportable, our 
sufferings so intolerable by perseverance, and our pleas- 
ures so tiresome by repetition, that no being in the 
universe could be so completely miserable as a species 
of immortal men." 

If physical immortality were a reality, it is still a ques- 
tion whether wickedness would not be restrained then, 
as now, by the knowledge of its own effects resulting from 
the exercise of moral or physical law ; and a still graver 



44 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYIXG. 



question whether a wicked species of men could by any 
possibility become immortal. The following exhibits the 
same writer's enthusiasm over the prospect of a future 
life : 

" At last death opens to us a new prospect, whence 
we shall probably look back upon the diversions and 
occupations of this world with the same contempt we do 
now on our tops and hobby-horses, and with the same 
surprise that they could ever so much entertain and 
engage us." 1 

John Foster, a writer of more than ordinary carefulness 
and rigor, yet in strict accord with this prevailing order of 
things, exclaims : 

" What a superlatively grand and consoling idea is that 
of death ! Without this radiant idea, this delightful 
morning-star, indicating that the luminary of Eternity is 
about to rise, light would darken into midnight melan- 
choly. Oh ! the expectation of living here, and living 
thus, always would be indeed a prospect of overwhelming 
despair ! " 

The citations may be said to fairly represent the mass 
of literature belonging to the subject ; and as such they 
are separable into two classes of objections : first, those 
based upon the evils and defects experienced in the 
present material mode of existence ; and secondly, those 
based upon the supposed superiority of a future spiritual 
mode of existence. 

Though the investigator, be he ever so careful and can- 
did in his work, can not fail to detect a suspicious flavor 



J Soame Jenyns. 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



45 



of "sour grapes " pervading all the myths, poetic fancies, 
and arguments employed against the doctrine of physical 
immortality, yet this will be found to be not the chief 
reason for these objections. In order that we may deter- 
mine this matter definitely, let us notice what the desire 
for life is. 

That aggregation of forces, or division of force in gen- 
eral, which maintains organization is termed vital force. 
Vital force sustains individual organisms in two ways : by 
supplying their internal wants, and by protecting them 
from external injury. The former includes hunger, 
alimentation, and nutrition ; the latter, the principle of 
self-protection or self-preservation. Nothing appears to 
be more closely incorporated with organization and life 
than this last-named principle. The outer membranes of 
the lowest and simplest organisms not only serve a forma- 
tive purpose in giving support and shape to the individual, 
but in many instances obviously serve to protect the life 
of the individual from the action of external forces. 
Nearly all land-plants and the exposed parts of many 
water-plants have an external layer of tissues, a principal 
office of which is to prevent the evaporation of moisture 
from within and thus preserve the life. The thorny armor 
of many trees and shrubs, the stinging needles of the 
nettle, and the poisonous exudations of the ivy, upas and 
other plants specially illustrate this principle of self- 
preservation among vegetals. Among animals there is 
found universally the protecting epidermis ; while the 
electricity of the torpedo, the odor of the skunk, the 
poison of the asp, the shell of the tortoise, the sepia of 



46 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



the cuttle-fish, the teeth and claws of the carnivora, the 
hoofs of the ungulata, and the tusks of the proboscida may 
serve as special illustrations of the same law. Thus the 
mole apprehending the descent of the hawk shrinks from 
destruction ; and the flying-fish takes refuge in the air 
from the maw of the shark. Still higher exhibitions of 
the principle are shown in the apparent deliberation and 
manifest strategy of animals. The cunning of the fox is 
proverbial ; and it is in the preservation of his own life 
that this quality is shown in the highest degree. Driven 
to his hole by the dogs to find a more dreaded enemy 
there — a man with a gun, — he frequently evades the shot 
of the sportsman by dashing through thickets and by 
covering his retreat with trees and fallen timber ; making 
an extensive circuit he warily approaches the vicinity of 
his home again ; should he find his human enemy still 
there, he leaves his habitation forever behind him, and 
eluding the hounds by doubling, and leaping chasms, and 
by the most rapid transit of the open country, he en- 
deavors to seek safety and a new abode in some remote 
section. 1 Hares when pursued by hounds have been 
known to swim into pools and conceal themselves among 
the rushes, and at other times to take refuge among 
sheep. These stratagems are resorted to by the fox also. 
The roe-deer when pursued, at times doubles on his 
track, and then halting he makes a prodigious leap to one 
side and lies flat upon the ground while the hounds go by. 
It has been observed that crows seldom allow a man with 
a gun to approach very near to them, while persons 

1 Smellie's " Natural History." 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



47 



without guns often get within good range. Certain in- 
sects, as bees, wasps, and ants, as well as many vertebrates, 
among which may be mentioned parrots, sea-fowl, sheep, 
goats, deer, the bison, zebra, horse, elephant, and monkey, 
display the characteristic of uniting in common defence 
when attacked. And it is doubtless true, that the grega- 
rious habits generally of many of these animals are the 
result of the principle of self-preservation. This is con- 
firmed, too, by the precautions many gregarious animals 
take to prevent surprise. Says Darwin : " Wild horses 
and cattle do not, I believe, make any danger signal ; but 
the attitude of any one who first discovers an enemy 
warns the others. Rabbits stamp loudly on the ground 
with their hind feet as a signal ; sheep and chamois do 
the same, but with their fore feet, uttering likewise a 
whistle. Many birds and some mammals post sentinels, 
which in case of seals are said generally to be the females. 
The leader of a troop of monkeys acts as the sentinel, and 
utters cries expressive both of danger and of safety." In 
man the principle of self-preservation is displayed in 
greater degree than by lower organisms ; though it ap- 
pears to vary greatly with different individuals, as well as 
with the same individual at different times. Pain and 
fear in man as in brutes are manifest products of this 
law. Soldiers bear witness to the fact that excessive 
weariness, as well as loss of blood, has the effect of de- 
stroying both pain and fear. Dr. Livingstone relates that 
while under the paw of a lion and in danger momentarily 
of being torn in pieces he experienced an entire want of 
fear. 



4-8 THE POSSIBILITY OF XOT DYIXG. 



In the mere infant the degree in which the principle of 
self-preservation evidently exists is akin to that exhibited 
by the lower brute animals. As age increases, the work- 
ings of the law are more manifest, until there exists in 
man a definite desire for life. This desire maybe defined 
as that faculty which appreciates the fact of existence 
and longs for its continuance. If this faculty be care- 
fully observed, it will be found that in general it is 
greatest in health and happiness, and weakest in sickness 
and sorrow; firm in sanity, wavering and fitful in in- 
sanity ; and in feeble old age constantly decreasing in the 
energy with which it is manifested. 

The inference to be drawn from observing all varieties 
of animal organization, then, is that the cause of self-pres- 
ervation, including its highest manifestation, the desire 
for life, is identical with the cause of life itself, and just 
in proportion as human life is complete and perfect, in 
the same degree will this desire be found to be strong 
and unyielding. Deductively, life, in order to be life, 
must embody the principle of self-preservation ; other- 
wise, except for indefinitely short periods, there could be 
no life. Moreover, there is in man no inherent principle 
warning him that he must die, and this desire being in- 
herent, and thus unrestricted, is necessarily co-extensive 
with the life which manifests it. And thus it is by a 
wise provision or a benevolent necessity existing in the 
nature of things, that he who has but little life desires but 
little ; and he who has more life desires more. The 
poet's rational expression is : 

11 ' T is life of which our nerves are scant, 
O life not deatb for which I pant. 
More life and fuller that I want." 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



49 



Yet making all allowances for the influence of sorrow, 
pain, and apathy, it would be a mistake to suppose that 
these influences alone should ever, in sane human beings, 
reduce this desire to the point of self-destruction. The 
poet's logic is quite equal to his verse when he says : 

*' Whatever crazy sorrow saith, 

No life that breathes with human breath 
Hath ever truly longed for death." 

The desire for life may be said to underlie all other 
human desires ; the expectation of wealth, aspiration after 
fame, the unceasing and unsatisfied longing for happiness, 
all include as a necessity this fundamental principle. To 
what deeds of valor, to what degree of physical endur- 
ance, to what heights of moral sublimity has it not 
prompted human effort ? And its greatness may be seen 
in the many and diverse directions of its influence. 
While it has impelled the ignominious flight of the 
coward, it has also nerved the warrior's arm to with- 
stand the bloodiest onset. While it has been the parent 
of the most abject lying, deceit, and treachery, it has, on 
the other hand, incited men to the most rigid observance 
of moral precepts. If Paracelsus and Cagliostro by 
reason of it duped their thousands, from the same source 
have the philosophers of all ages drawn inspiration and 
truth for the world's benefit. It has been the parent of 
adventure and experiment. By reason of it Baron 
Trencks have undermined the earth like moles and 
braved the dangers of torture and suffering ; Ponce de 
Leons have explored new continents ; Tycho Brahes and 
Theodore Bezas have watched the stars through many 



50 THE POSSIBILITY OF XOT DYING. 



weary years ; and Gebers and Lullys and Von Helmonts 
have gazed, how often with feverish interest, into the bub- 
bling and ever disappointing crucible. Science and civ- 
ilization in a thousand ways are indebted to it ; while so 
complete and absorbing is its effect upon individual life, 
that not a feeling or faculty can be regarded as entirely 
free from its influence. 

So profound, in fact, is this element of human nature, 
and so far-reaching in its application, that it would not be 
surprising if opinions supposed to be entertained by 
reason of other influences were found to be really depend- 
ent upon this principle as an efficient cause. And such 
is the fact. Of all the carefully-worded objections ever 
written against the desirableness of an endless physical 
life, a majority of these objections, it will be found, have 
proceeded from the very desire whose influence they 
have striven to depreciate. The experiences of sorrow 
and suffering have of course had their influence in the 
production of that class of objections in which these evils 
are involved ; but they, as efficient causes, tend to deaden 
the powers and retard the production of thought, while 
as reasons or illustrations they can only be used, as has 
been indicated, to show the undesirableness of defective 
and imperfect life. 

The desire for life arising spontaneously in the mind, 
is, when reduced to terms of force, a simple manifestation 
of vital force. It is a law of mechanics that a body acted 
upon by a given force will move in the direction of that 
force until the given impulse is exhausted. And the same 
law will be found to apply to the action of this desire. 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



51 



The simple idea of a continuous, unlimited existence 
is logically and actually the effect of this force, termed the 
desire for life. This is illustrated, first, by the exertion 
made by every person, in normal possession of his powers, 
to sustain life as long as possible ; and secondly, by iso- 
lated cases where this simple idea acts unrestrainedly in 
the mind, as is said to have been the case with an eminent 
American novelist, and with the poet Cowper, who, in 
youth, firmly believed that he should never cease to live. 
And confirmed also by such statements as that of Wm. 
Hazlitt, " No young man thinks he shall ever die," and of 
Edward Young, " All men think all men mortal but them- 
selves." Finally, this is shown in the almost universal be- 
lief in a future state. A second law of mechanics is, that 
a body acted upon by two forces takes the direction of 
their resultant. And thus it is with the mind impelled by 
the desire for life on the one hand, and met by the ap- 
parent inevitableness of death on the other : the resultant 
is, in most cases a belief in a future state. 

The action of this desire to produce this result is sub- 
ject to modification. Religious training, in most instances, 
probably so serves to conceal its presence that its possess- 
or remains in entire ignorance of its operation. He be- 
comes so imbued with the doctrines of his particular 
creed, all of which take the " future life" for granted, 
that he too comes to regard it as a matter of course. More- 
over, he who firmly believes that when he closes his eyes 
in death it is but to awaken in a brighter, grander world, 
where he shall possess greater powers, and where the mag- 
nificent gifts of earth will dwindle to insignificant baubles, 



52 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



— such a one will not hesitate to deride the present life 
even in its most perfect manifestations, as a mockery and 
a failure. But where do such speculators get their ideas 
of another life ? Has the beautiful region beyond been 
explored ? Has any one the slightest vestige or memento 
of that undiscovered realm which will bear a moment's 
scrutiny? Or, are there human kind who, having experi- 
enced better modes of life than this, prior to their en- 
trance here, now, like weary travellers surfeited with 
novel sights and pleasures, scorn the meagre offerings of 
this world in their eagerness to pass beyond. 

We know this life, this world only. It is impossible 
for us to conceive of any other life differing essentially 
from this. We may imagine that we long for another 
life different from this ; but it will be purely imagination ; 
we shall simply long for another life like this with cer- 
tain obnoxious experiences left out. M this life possessed 
no desirable features, all who had discretion enough to 
discern that fact would at once become suicides, and by 
no possibility could we long for another life. Whatever 
the religion we may entertain, — that religion was originally 
the product of the thoughts and desires of living men ; be- 
liefs in the doctrines of that religion, as well as the doc- 
trines themselves, have been in process of modification since 
its foundingby reason of new discoveries and developments 
in this world ; whatever description that religion may 
contain of a " future life " is couched in terms of this 
life ; and finally, in many cases our loyalty to the given 
religion is in the ratio of our ignorance of its dogmas. All 
of which indicates the spontaneous and human character 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



55 



of the religious sentiment ; to which immortality, the es- 
sential element in every religion, is no exception. Says 
a recent writer : 

" What men love and what they hate has a strong effect 
upon their beliefs in God and immortality. They like 
fair-play, therefore they believe God to be just and the 
rewarder of the just. They like being loved, therefore 
they believe God to be loving. Or they admire and feel 
the value of power, therefore they believe God to be 
almighty. So with immortality and heaven. Life is 
dear ; so men believe they will live forever. If human 
nature took a sudden and real aversion to conscious ex- 
istence, convincing proofs would appear to rise up on 
every side that the tomb ends all, and the belief in im- 
mortality would be obsolete in a week. Here, if any- 
where, ' the wish has been father to the thought.' * * 
* As to the heavens that have been believed in, they 
have been very many and significantly various. * * 
And each of these heavens has corresponded exactly with 
what the men believing in it have been constitutionally 
disposed to deem desirable, and would have secured to 
themselves on earth if they could, and which they post- 
pone to the day after death only because they know it to 
be unattainable, and know too little about death to be 
sure it will be unattainable then." 1 

It is not a mysterious thing, then, if we are wholly un- 
able to acquire implicit confidence in the reality of that 
hypothetical future beyond the grave ; for it is beyond 
our power to put faith in that which we can by no possi- 



1 Miss L. S. Bevington in Nineteenth Century for Oct., 1879. 



54 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



bility conceive of. Wherefore we conclude that the 
poet's assertion must be a very near approach to the 
truth : 

" Sure there is none but fears a future st«ate ; 
And when the most obdurate swear they do not, 
Their trembling hearts belie their boasting tongues. '' 

This should be interpreted to mean that all fear their 
own theories of the " future life, 0 and not death, because 
in the latter sense it would be untrue ; thousands of 
human beings have lived, probably, who have acquired so 
much of philosophy as to appreciate their own littleness 
and the greatness of the Power to which they with all 
things else are subject. And realizing that they came 
into the world by reason of this same Omnipotence ; that 
they have constantly been subject to its control, notwith- 
standing their longings for existence, their confidence in 
this Power has cast out fear, or their fear has been swal- 
lowed up by the acquired contempt for their own insig- 
nificance. The Emperor Marcus Aurelius was of the 
latter class, who wrote the following advice on this sub- 
ject : "Always observe how ephemeral and worthless 
human beings are, and what was yesterday a little mucus, 
to-morrow will be a mummy or ashes. Pass then through 
this little space of time conformably to nature, and end 
thy journey in content, just as an olive falls when it is 
ripe, blessing nature who produced it, thanking the tree 
on which it grew." 1 

A vastly greater number have met death with equa- 
nimity, however, because of their desire for life and the 

1 Thoughts of the Emperor M. Aurelius — iv, 48. 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



55 



consequent confidence which they came to possess in a 
" future life." Socrates was of this class, whom Plato 
represents as saying : " For my part, if I thought I should 
not find in the other world gods as good and as wise, and 
men infinitely better than we are here, it would be a piece 
of injustice in me not to be troubled at death. But be it 
known to you Simmias, and to you Cebes, that I hope to 
arrive at the assembly of the just. Indeed, in this point 
I may flatter myself, but as for finding masters infinitely 
good and wise, that I can assure you of, as much as 
things of that nature will bear ; and therefore it is, that 
death is no trouble to ine ; hoping that there is something 
reserved for the dead after this life ; and that the good 
meet with better treatment in the world to come than the 
bad." 

That there was something of stoicism in Socrates is 
evinced in another remark made on the same occasion : 
" True philosophers make it the whole business of their 
life-time to learn to die. Now, it is extremely ridiculous 
for them, after they run out a whole course incessantly, 
in order to compass that one end, to flinch and be afraid 
when it comes up to them, when they are just in a 
capacity of obtaining it after a long and careful search." 

But that Socrates' anticipations were gleaned from his 
experiences here, and consequently based upon his desire 
for this life, is evident from his account of the " perfect 
earth above the pure heavens " which he expected to 
reach. " This earth," he says, "is encircled with gold 
and silver, which being scattered all over in great abun- 
dance, cast forth a charming splendor on all sides. A 



56 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



sight of this earth is a view of the blessed. It is inhabited 
by all sorts of animals, and by men. * * * They 
have sacred groves, and temples actually inhabited by 
the gods." And so on, in an extended account, does he 
depict this future world to his friends ; which account he 
does not claim to be at all accurate, for he says : " No 
man of sense would pretend to assert that these things 
are exactly as you have heard ; but all thinking men will 
agree that the state of the soul and the place of its abode 
after death is either such as I represent it to be, or very 
near like it, provided the soul be immortal ; and will 
certainly find it worth while to run the risk, for what was 
ever" more inviting ? One cannot but be charmed with 
that blessed hope. And for this reason I have thus 
dwelt upon it." 1 The " blessed hope" of Socrates, it is 
very evident, is his desire for this life with its defects 
omitted. 

A similar " hope " has inspired the devotees of religion 
in all ages and climes. Norsemen by reason of the same 
hope plunged into the battle with the fury of lions ; for 
those who died bravely fighting would be conducted by 
beautiful white-clad virgins to their god Odin's hall, re- 
splendent Valhalla. The same desire urged on the 
deadly steel of the Moslem ; and his battle-cry to Allah 
was inspired by ecstatic visions of sparkling fountains, 
brilliant flowers, fruits, and birds, delightsome music, and 
the charming presence of dark-eyed houris, — all to be 
found in that paradise he might win by death. The 

1 From the " Phoedon of Plato's Divine Dialogues." Tran. from 
French edition of M. Dacier. 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



57 



martyrs of all times have been upheld in enduring the 
most extreme tortures and sufferings by this same " hope." 
The early Christians especially illustrate this. There 
were, it is true, two classes : one that Clemens styles 
" heretics," and of whom he says : " Some of these show 
their impiety and cowardice by loving their lives, saying 
that the knowledge of the really existing God is true 
testimony (martyrdom), but that a man is a self-murderer 
who bears witness by his death." Of the other class, Cave 
in his " Primitive Christianity " says : " They did flock 
to the place of torment faster than droves of beasts that 
are driven to the shambles. They even longed to be in 
the arms of suffering. Ignatius, though then in his jour- 
ney to Rome in order to his execution, yet by the way as 
he went could not but vent his passionate desire for it : 
' O that I might come to those wild beasts that are pre- 
pared for me ! I heartily wish that I may presently meet 
with them ; I would invite and encourage them speedily 
to devour me, and not be afraid to set upon me as they 
have been to others ; nay, should they refuse it, I should 
even force them to it. ' Ignatius had merely accepted 
one horn of a dilemna by which Paul had acknowledged 
himself puzzled in considering whether it was better to 
press on to perfection or to die and be with Christ. " 

This " hope," or desire, has not only impelled and sus- 
tained the disciple and follower in religion, but it has 
been the central idea, the initiatory impulse which under- 
lay the theories and developed the enthusiasm of the 
great religious leaders and founders. Zoroaster, accord- 
ing to Plutarch, looked forward to the time " when Pluto 



58 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



shall fail, and mankind shall be happy, and neither need 
food, nor yield a shadow, " to the time when Armanius, 
Prince of Evil, "must of necessity be himself utterly ex- 
tinguished and destroyed ; at which time, the earth being 
made plain and level, there will be one life, and one 
society of mankind made all happy, and one speech. " 

Buddha, the son of a king, of surpassing beauty of per- 
son, and with the pleasures and riches of a regal court 
at his command, becomes rilled with sorrow at beholding 
a tottering old man ; the sight of disease is a source of 
pain to him ; and the loathsome spectacle of a dead body 
causes him to renounce a princely career, and to spend 
his years in considering the problem of human life. His 
third " Great Truth" is, " That there is no escape from 
existence except by destruction of desire " ; and his dying 
words, referring to the same subject, were : " Beloved, * 
that which causes life, causes also decay and death. 
Never forget this ; let your minds be filled with this 
truth. I called you to make it known to you." 1 

During five years preceding his active career, Moham- 
med was accustomed frequently to retire to a cavern on 
Mt. Hira, and engage in long and solitary broodings on 
the phenomena of life and death, and the nature of evil 
and God ; till, as a result of his meditations, he concludes 
that escape from the punishments of hell and the inheri- 
tance of an everlasting life are to be attained by means 
chiefly of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving. 

And if there should be those who question the consist- 
ency of a divine sacrifice, to appease the infinite wrath 

1 Encyc. Brit., IX edition, Article, Buddhism. 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



59 



of God because of defects existing in his own creatures, 
none can deny that the desire for life may have been ade- 
quate even in a man, to cause him to endure all re- 
proaches and disgrace, if it should be found that he sup- 
posed thereby he might be not merely the gainer himself, 
but savior of his fellow-men. 

There is another phase of this subject which needs to 
be considered, and that is, how far and in what way 
does this desire for life tend to demonstrate human im- 
mortality ? It has been a favorite argument with some of 
the ablest philosophers and theologians since Plato's time, 
that the instinctive desire in man for existence is indica- 
tive of a want, just as hunger indicates a want, and which, 
like hunger, it is fair to suppose has provision made by the 
power controlling the universe for its satisfaction. The 
argument is stated as follows by an eminent writer : 
" There is in man an instinctive feeling of immortality. 
This shows itself exactly as all the other instincts show 
themselves. Men, in all ages, countries, nations, races, 
have believed in a ' future life • ; but they have had very 
different notions about the 4 future life.' * * * This 
I think proves the existence in man of an instinct of im- 
mortality ; for it has all the attributes of an instinct. It 
is universal, — appearing in all races and times. It is in- 
voluntary, — coming up of itself before any instruction. It 
is constant, — never disappearing from human conscious- 
ness however much it may be modified therein. It is ac- 
tive and operative, — showing itself as a feeling, a longing 
after immortality ; as a belief in some kind of immortal- 
ity ; and an action leading to certain religious practice 



6o THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



in relation to immortality, wherein every one is con- 
scious of this instinct in himself. We all, in our desires 
and thoughts, reach forward beyond death ; we imagine 
ourselves as present in this life after we die, and as 
always existing somewhere. It is impossible to realize 
the end of our own consciousness. If we try to imagine 
ourselves as annihilated, we also imagine ourselves as 
looking on, and seeing ourselves annihilated." 1 

It will need no argument to prove that the instinct 
of immortality and the desire f:r life are one and 
the same thing ; since the desire for life must evidently 
precede the desire for endless life, and since the latter in- 
cludes the former. This principle must not, however, be 
mistaken for a mere wish. Says the writer already 
quoted : " The argument is not that because we wish for a 
thing, we shall certainly have it ; but it is this : Whenever 
God places an instinctive tendency in his creatures, 
universal, constant, permanent, he provides something 
which corresponds in reality and fact to that tendency." 

This is undoubtedly a strong argument for immortality, 
supported as it is by the entire emotional nature. Said 
Lord Byron, by no means a religious enthusiast : " I feel 
my immortality oversweep all pains, all tears, all time, all 
fears ; and peal, like the eternal thunders of the deep, 
into my ears this truth, — thou livest forever ! " 

Accepting the conclusion, then, that man is immortal, 
is there any thing in the nature of the instinct or desire on 
which we base this immortality from which we can de- 
termine its kind or nature ? When a man sinks into 



1 " The Hour Which Cometh " (Chap. XIX), Jas. Freeman Clark. 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



6l 



a lethargy and remains unconscious, barely manifesting 
vegetative life for. weeks, and then dies, shall we conclude 
that his clogged intellect at the moment of dissolution 
suddenly acquires normal power ? or, indeed, more than 
normal power, so that it is enabled without eyes to 
see, without ears to hear, without nerves to feel, and with- 
out a brain to think ? Having started on a logical basis 
shall we at once become illogical ? If there were no other 
mode of immortality conceivable we should be forced 
to do this. But it were better for us to class ourselves 
with the Psychopannychians and encounter all the terrors 
of attempting to pronounce the word, than thus to sacri- 
fice our reason and the laws of logic at the first step. If 
immortality is the logical sequence of the desire for 
life, it must by the same rule be of a kind corresponding 
to the nature of the life desired, /. e., to this life minus its 
defects. In accepting this conclusion, though grave diffi- 
culties be met, they need not frighten us. No difficulty 
could be proposed greater than the first difficulty in the 
way of conceiving of a future " spiritual " mode of be- 
ing. No difficulty greater than conceiving of a man dead 
as yet alive. Says Prof. Bain : " It is now often said 
that the mind and body act upoii each other j that neither is 
allowed, so to speak, to pursue its course alone ; there is 
a constant interference, a mutual influence between the 
two. This view is liable to the following objections : — 

" In the first place, it assumes that we are entitled to 
speak of mind apart from body, and to affirm its powers 
and properties in that separate capacity. But of mind 
apart from body we have no direct experience, and abso- 



62 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



lutely no knowledge. The wind may act upon the sea, 
and the waves may react upon the wind ; yet the agents 
are known in separation, they are seen to exist apart 
before the shock of collision : but we are not allowed to 
perceive a mind acting apart from its material com- 
panion. 

" In the second place,we have every reason fo'r believing 
that there is, in company with all our mental processes 
an unbroken material succession. From the ingress of a 
sensation to the outgoing responses in action, the mental 
succession is not for an instant dissevered from a physical 
succession. * . * "* While we go the round of the mental 
circle of sensation, emotion, and thought, there is an 
unbroken physical circle of effects. It would be incom- 
patible with every thing we know of the cerebral action, 
to suppose that the physical chain ends abruptly in a 
physical void, occupied by an immaterial substance; which 
immaterial substance, after working alone, imparts its 
results to the other edge of the physical break, and deter- 
mines the active response — two shores of the material 
with an intervening ocean of the immaterial. There is, 
in fact, no rupture of nervous continuity. 

" The same line of criticism applies to another phrase 
in common use, namely, ' The mind uses the body as its 
instrument,' or medium of operating on the external world. 
This also assumes for mind a separate existence, a power 
of living apart, an option of working with or without a 
body. Actuated by the desire of making itself known, 
and of playing a part in the sphere of matter, the mind 
uses its bodily ally to gratify this desire ; but if it chose to 



THE DESIRE FOR LIFE. 



63 



be self-contained, to live satisfied with its own contem- 
plations, like the gods as conceived by Aristotle, it need 
not enter into co-operation with any physical process, 
with brain, senses, or muscular organs. I will not reiter- 
ate the groundlessness of this supposition. The physi- 
cal alliance is the very law of our mental being ; it is not 
contrived purely for the purpose of making our mental 
states known ; without it we should not have mental states 
at all." 1 

But why should we despond if we find that to exist at 
all it is necessary to have a body as well as mind ? The 
possibilities of this life are wholly unknown. The poten- 
tialities of this organism called man we know little about. 
The universe is made of a texture so refined, and pos- 
sesses proportions so comprehensive, as to more than 
satisfy any yearnings for a theoretical heaven. And if 
these yearnings mean any thing, they serve to show that 
an endless life on the basis of a physical existence is 
possible. If, however, any should question the proposi- 
tion that an endless life is possible because it is desirable, 
they cannot deny that if such a life were possible it would 
certainly be desirable. 

1 " Mind and Body," (pp. 130-1-3). 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE EVIDENCE FROM POSITIVISM. 

The Positivist's Ground — The Same Premise but a Different Conclusion— The 
Body not a Machine — Death and Ignorance — Life's Differential — Studies 
— Retarding Causes — Philosophy of a Human Being — Development and 
Reproduction Antagonistic — Facts. 

T^ROM this stand-point there is no other mode of immor- 
tality conceivable or possible to man as now consti- 
tuted. Says Edward Harrison, speaking of the future life: 
" There is no promise, be it plainly said, of any thing but an 
immortality of influences, of spiritual work, of glorified ac- 
tivity. * * * We say the immaterial entity (the soul) 
is something which we cannot grasp, which explains noth- 
ing, for which we cannot have a shadow of evidence. We 
are determined to treat man as a human organism, just as 
we treat a dog as a canine organism ; and we know no 
ground for saying, and no good to be got by pretending, 
that man is a human organism plus an indescribable entity. 
We say the human organism is a marvellous thing, sub- 
lime, if you will, of subtilest faculty and sensibility ; but 
we, at any rate, can find nothing in man which is not an 
organic part of this organism ; we find the faculties of 
mind, feeling, and will directly dependent on physical 
organs ; and to talk to us of mind, feeling, and will con- 
tinuing their functions in the absence of physical organs 
and visible organisms, is to use language which, to us at 

64 



THE EVIDENCE FROM POSITIVISM. 



65 



least, is pure nonsense. And now to turn to the great 
phenomenon of material organisms which we call Death. 
The human organism, like every other organism, ulti- 
mately loses that stable equilibrium of its correlated forces, 
which we call Life, and ceases to be an organism or sys- 
tem of organs, adjusting its internal relations to its exter- 
nal conditions. Thereupon the existence of the complex 
independent entity, to which we attribute consciousness 
undoubtedly — /. for aught we know to the contrary — 
comes to an end. * * * We have not the slightest 
reason to suppose that the consciousness of the organ- 
ism continues, for we mean by consciousness, the sum 
of sensations of a particular organism, and the particular 
organism being dissolved, we have nothing left whereto 
to attribute consciousness." 

Positivism regards humanity as the crew of a sailing 
vessel which never reaches port. Each sailor performs 
his duty, helps to instruct the new crew of descendants 
in the performance of similar duties, and then drops into 
the sea. Accepting the same premises, the question will 
be considered whether the ship must not ultimately make 
a harbor — whether at some time near or remote, man will 
not obtain the power of an endless life ; or, at least, 
whether such a result is not warranted by the facts, and 
therefore a possibility. 

The human organism, to the extent it is now under- 
stood, affords the first and perhaps most convincing ar- 
gument in support of this claim. Human organic life 
manifests itself in alternate movements of building up 
and tearing down, of repair and decay, of life and death ; 



66 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



and why in intelligent human beings the ratio of up- 
building forces should ever fall below the ratio of de- 
structive forces is a question. 

Says William Ware: "When apart from the associations 
of experience we think of the human body in the full 
activity of its functions, and supplied with all that is 
necessary to their performance, we can see no reason 
why it should not exist and act forever. * * * We 
are not governed or repaired like machines ; we do not 
come to an end like them. If, indeed, every part of a 
machine were repaired as fast as it gives way ; if it were 
moved by a power which is the result of its own activity, 
its similarity to a living body would be more complete, 
and we can see no reason why either should cease to exist 
and to move." " Of violent or accidental destruction from 
external causes we cannot conceive, as of the disintegra- 
tion of a rock, or the solution of a crystal ; but, in these 
cases, we know that no power proper to the existence of 
the object has been destroyed, whereas, of natural disso- 
lution, involving the extinction of the power which has 
kept up the organization, we can form no definite idea." 1 
The writer does not mean, of course, the utter " extinction 
of the power which has kept up the organization " save as 
related to that organization. By the law of the correla- 
tion of forces, the power which controls organization and 
life cannot be destroyed ; it may assume another form, as 
light, heat, or electricity, but it never becomes extinct. 
Its sources are exhaustless, and its continuance is as in- 
finite as its extent. The answer to the question, then, 

1 Smellie's " Philosophy of Natural History." 



THE EVIDENCE FROM POSITIVISM. 67 



why death ever ensues as the result of decay in human 
life, must be found in our ignorance of the forces which 
constitute life, or our inability to control these forces 
to our own permanent betterment. 

Vegetals, brutes, barbarians, and civilized men, while 
they possess life of the same kind, manifest differences in 
the degree of that life in proportion as they approximate 
to, or manifest mind. Why an annual plant dies is com- 
paratively plain ; because the plant is a passive object hav- 
ing no power of controlling or modifying the forces which 
act upon it. And since the destructive forces at a certain 
period in the plant's growth become greater than the cre- 
ative, the plant dies. The death of brutes and savages, 
for a similar reason, is not, comparatively speaking, mys- 
terious. But death in intelligent organisms, it is evident, 
can only result when the intelligence is not sufficient to 
control the antecedent forces. 

Says Herbert Spencer: " Death by natual decay occurs, 
because in old age the relations between assimilation, oxi- 
dation, and genesis of force going on in the organism 
gradually fall out of correspondence with the relations be- 
tween oxygen and food and absorption of heat by the 
environment. Death from disease arises either when the 
organism is congenitally defective in its power to balance 
the ordinary external actions by the ordinary internal ac- 
tions, or when there has taken place some unusual external 
action. Death by accident implies some neighboring 
mechanical changes of which the causes are either unob- 
served from inattention or are so intricate that their results 
cannot be foreseen ; and consequently certain relations 



68 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



in the organism are not adjusted to the relations in the 
environment. Manifestly, if to every outer co-existence 
and sequence by which it was ever in any degree affected 
the organism presented an answering process or act, the 
simultaneous changes would be indefinitely numerous and 
complex, and the successive ones endless — the corre- 
spondence would be the greatest conceivable, and the life 
the highest conceivable, both in degree and in length." 

The mystery of death produced by decay or disease 
does not appear to lie so much in the immediate fact, as 
in that antecedent cause by which those internal relations 
constituting life are gradually weakened. Molecular death 
is a constant factor and evidently a necessity of life. 
From the moment of conception the individual increases 
in power to withstand external forces, through the con- 
stant elimination and renovation of molecules. This 
continues usually, to all appearance, far past the period of 
adult age. Why there should come a period when this 
ratio of internal to external adjustment should so far de- 
crease as to permit the destruction of the individual, is the 
question. Why should not the human body constantly 
and continuously increase in its power to withstand and 
control external influences ? That a period does come, 
when the power of internal adjustment, as related to ex- 
ternal change, so far decreases as to permit the destruc- 
tion of the individual, is not in theory at least an insur- 
mountable difficulty. For the reason that the more 
prominent causes which tend to bring about this state of 
things may be discerned. If life is the constant balance 
of accounts in the human economy, and death a state of 



THE EVIDENCE FROM POSITIVISM. 



69 



insolvency, there is no good reason why the unprofitable 
investments and bad debts which tend to this end should 
not be detected. And the causes which tend toward 
bankruptcy are precisely the same in kind if not in degree 
as those which finally effect it. Each individual has, 
therefore, in his own past life, an opportunity to study the 
causes which tend toward his own dissolution, and to pro- 
vide suitable means for averting and controlling them. 

But of more importance than all this is the fact that 
each individual has the opportunity to study the character 
and sources of organic power in his own person, and to 
determine a method by which this power may be aug- 
mented. If man could avoid all accidents, if he possessed 
infallible remedies for every form of disease, he still would 
be subject to 

" The silver livery of advised age" ; 
and the study of medicines and disease, therefore, though 
of value, cannot be the chief aim of the investigator in 
this field. His researches must include, first of all, a study 
of the laws and forces of inorganic nature, since to these 
laws all organic life is constantly subject. The phe- 
nomena manifested by the lowest and simplest organisms 
will properly claim his attention next, because the laws 
which control the simplest, are also discernible in the 
most complex forms. The anatomy and physiology of 
brutes and man, and the phenomena of nerve action, sen- 
sation, instinct, and mind, will follow. Finally, social 
influences and all peculiar and abnormal penomena re- 
lating to life must be considered, and their bearings upon 
and relation to, human life taken into account. 



70 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



On the supposition that a continuous life could be 
attained and the natural tendency to dissolution over- 
come, a great number of causes can be cited which now 
appear to prevent this result. There is unquestionably 
an extended net-work of influences dragging man down- 
ward and earthward : The impress of personal experience 
which constantly reminds him that all men die ;• the im- 
perious demand of personal needs, which allow no time 
for investigations that are not productive of " bread and 
butter "; the disheartening influence of defeat and failure, 
which create apathy and indifference for life itself ; and 
the influence of that religious belief which authoritatively 
asserts, Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return ! 

Besides these social forces the most potent cause re- 
mains, that each one is ignorant of his own physical 
nature. 

Specifically, this ignorance is referable chiefly to two 
laws : the one, alluded to already, by which individual life 
is developed ; the other, the law by which the race is per- 
petuated. The philosophy of a human being, so far as 
understood, may be summarized as follows : Man, like 
other organisms, develops from a germ, through the force 
derived from his food and the atmosphere. As a particle 
of iron brought within the attraction of a magnet is af- 
fected, so the specialized tissues known as germ and 
sperm severally seem to bear the impress of the parent 
organism, though in a more exact and special way than 
the iron. A condition of inequality being induced by the 
union of the two, just as a mass of matter, falling or im- 
pinging upon another, forces it into a new position, so the 



THE EVIDENCE FROM POSITIVISM. 



71 



human germ divides and subdivides, and in accordance 
with the law, that a body acted upon by a given force 
follows the line of least resistence, so the particles and 
parts of a human being, a continued series of inequalities 
being set up, tend to rearrange themselves, similar to the 
parent organisms, the process being modified, of course, 
by all other forces to which the new organism is subject 
Bones, muscles, and nerves develop, each with some 
special function. In all the higher types, the degree of 
intelligence or mind is dependent upon the amount, pro- 
portion, and arrangement of nerve substance. Along with 
the power of movement in organized nerve substance, 
develops constantly a subjective phase which we experi- 
ence as feeling and thought When man, like other 
organisms, has reached a point where the external forces 
of atmospheric pressure, gravity, etc., balance the internal 
forces, growth ceases. Quite naturally the inflowing 
forces then act to affect the organism internally, and the 
law by which the race is perpetuated begins to assert its 
sway. 

The Egyptians held, according to Wilkinson, that dis- 
solution is the cause of reproduction. From the stand- 
point of positivism, the converse of this proposition would 
appear to be more exactly true, namely : that, in general, 
reproduction is the efficient cause of dissolution. A great 
number of facts could be cited in support of this view. 

In many classes of organisms, new individuals are 
directly developed by the destruction of the old : among 
unicellular types the old separate into parts to form two 
or more new individuals, as in Paramecium ; in other low 



72 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



types, the new form within the old and burst it asunder, 
as in the Volvox; in others, a budding process develops the 
new at the expense of the old, as in Hydrozoa. The aloe 
plant is an example, which after accumulating force for a 
century, expends all in the development of its blossom, 
and in blooming dies. May-flies exist, in the larval and 
nymphal stages, beneath the surface of water for several 
years, but appear in the winged state only for a day, to 
reproduce their kind and die. "This is strikingly ex- 
hibited," says Nicholson, speaking of the destructive 
character of sexual reproduction, " in the majority of 
insects, which pass the greater portion of their existence 
in a sexually immature condition, and die almost im- 
mediately after they have become sexually perfect, and 
have consummated the act whereby the perpetuation of 
the species is secured." 1 Death occurs at times among 
the higher types, similarly, though not usually ; yet the 
same principle prevails throughout all organic nature, 
and man is no exception to the general law. "Genesis 
under every form," says Spencer, " is a process of nega- 
tive or positive disintegration" ; and hence, as Dr. Car- 
penter affirms, " the development of the individual and 
the reproduction of the species stand in an inverse ratio 
to each other." That man should be amenable to this 
law, with the simplest organism, is inferable from the fact 
that man is but an organized mass of simple cells, and 
may be regarded as developed from the simplest organism 
through an indefinite number of gradations. 

All higher organisms seem to be the result of a plan — 

1 "Study of Biology." 



THE EVIDENCE FROM POSITIVISM. 



73 



nature's invention — by which the production of new cells 
at the expense of the old contributes to the development 
of the individual organism. In this view, all organic 
growth may be regarded as a process identical with 
agamic reproduction ; and certain it is that as soon as the 
" point of nutritional equilibrium " is reached, the law 
controlling reproduction begins to be apparent. Says 
Nicholson : " If we regard the asexual methods of repro- 
duction as being merely forms of growth, we can readily 
understand how it is that zooidal multiplication generally 
excludes reproduction for a time. The time, however, 
ultimately comes in the life of all organisms, when multi- 
plication by gemmation and fission becomes insufficient, 
when it becomes necessary that the essential elements of 
reproduction should be produced. The additional tax 
thus imposed upon the organism is usually borne without 
injury for a certain length of time ; but the losses thus 
caused, if slow, are sure, and in some cases so great as to 
end in the immediate destruction of the organism." 

Why this law is not so immediate in its workings, 
among higher types, is doubtless due to the fact that the 
reproductive function is specialized and its effects are not 
felt to the same extent in all parts of the organism, so 
that the reparative powers for a time successively with- 
stand the destructive. But as every repeated action tends 
to alter the organism to correspond with such action, and 
to fix habits by which the psychical conditions the more 
readily conform to such performance, the result in every 
case is the same. As it will not take a very acute logician 
to infer that life can only be produced at the expense of 



74 



THE POSSIBILITY OF XOT DYING. 



life, so it will not need a very keen observer to detect the 
fact that the most intense physical and mental excitation 
can only result in a corresponding degree of disintegra- 
tion and depression, the continuance of which must 
finally result in dissolution. 

Let us not be misunderstood. Failure to reproduce 
their kind, simply, could be of no advantage to any class 
of beings, as the history of celibacy, of the fanatical 
type, undoubtedly proves ; but that individual progress 
and culture must depend upon utilizing those forces 
closely interwoven with the organism which the law of 
race development destroys, is supported by such facts as 
the following : 

1. Organisms in general attain their greatest perfection 
at the period when the law of race begins to act and the 
upbuilding forces are not yet encroached upon. 

2. Heredity, as evinced in the minute resemblances of 
offspring to parents, proves the vicarious character of the 
reproductive function and its consequent effect on every 
part of the parent organism. 

3. The chemical composition of nerve substance, 
which in higher animals is always correlated with psychical 
power, is nearly the same as of that expended in procrea- 
tion. 

4. Wherever early or unrestricted cohabitation pre- 
vails, progress is a minus quantity. 

5. The most exalted human efforts have been depend- 
ent upon the control of sexual desire ; the names of New- 
ton, Kant, Humboldt, Grimm, Irving, and many others, 
will suggest the evidence. 



THE EVIDENCE FROM POSITIVISM. 



75 



6. The existence of such qualities as modesty, fear, 
secrec-y, shame, etc., as referring to this particular func- 
tion, whether their origin be instinctive or acquired, 
points to a tacit acknowledgment of the deteriorating in- 
fluence on the individual of the reproductive function. 



CHAPTER V. 



IS THERE AN UNKNOWN FORCE ? 



Great and Small Streams — The Physical Forces not Life — An Unexplored Ven- 
ice — The Subjective Side of Force — Swedenborg's Vision — Mesmerism- 
Expectancy not Sufficient— Percentage of Fraud — Hamlet — Billiard Balls — 
The Leverage of Descent — A Human Porcupine— Harmonious Growth. 



HERE is an actual stream of life, the sources of which 



exist in the food and air that each individual con- 
sumes. This stream, which is but a minute diversion 
from the majestic ocean-current of existence, is not less 
wonderful than the continuous but diversified movement 
of that mightiest river itself. The processes by which mat- 
ter possessing quite dissimilar properties is converted into 
the substance of the body are but partially understood. 
Says Nicholson: " In plants, as in animals, the vital pro- 
cesses are carried on by forces which we cannot as yet 
refer to known chemical and physical forces, and which, 
therefore, we are in the meanwhile compelled to speak 
of as ' vital.' " That chemical action, heat, light, and 
electricity are all necessary to the maintenance of life, is 
known ; but it is not known that these forces alone con- 
stitute life. 

Physiologists and biologists who know the most about 
human life, best recognize how much yet remains to be 
discovered. That assumptions pass for knowledge in this 
field, is illustrated not infrequently in post-mortem exam- 




IS THERE AN UNKNOWN FORCE? 77 



mations, and in the fact that aphorisms of the schools are 
by certain phenomena set at defiance. To live without 
air and food is by the authorities regarded as impossible, 
yet some of the fakirs of India allow themselves to be 
buried up in the ground, in sealed coffins, and wheat 
sowed above their tombs. After a period of some weeks 
they are exhumed and resuscitated, to all appearance 
none the worse for their protracted slumbers. 1 It is not 
wonderful, then, that ignorance should exist with regard 
to the life-forces and -processes. 

Carpenter's Physiology, page 868, foot-note. 4 'See a collection 
of these cases, directly obtained from British officers who had been 
eye-witnesses of them in India, by Mr. Braid, in his ' Observations 
on Trance, or Human Hybernation/ 1850. In one of these, vouched 
for by Sir Claude M. Wade (formerly political agent at the Court of 
Runjeet Singh), the fakir was buried in an underground cell, under 
strict guardianship, for six weeks; the body had been twice dug up by 
Runjeet Singh during the period of interment, and had been found 
in the same position as when first buried. In another case narrated 
by Lieutenant Boileau, in his 1 Narrative of a Journey in Rajwarra, 
in 1835,' the man had been buried for ten days, in a grave lined with 
masonry and covered with large slabs of stone, and strictly guarded ; 
and he assured Lieutenant B. that he was ready to submit to an inter- 
ment of twelve-months' duration, if desired. In a third case narrated by 
Mr. Braid, the trial was made under the direct superintendence of a 
British officer, a period of nine days having been stipulated for on 
the part of the devotee ; but this was shortened to three at the desire 
of the officer, who feared lest he should incur blame if the result was 
fatal. The appearance of the body when first disinterred is described 
in all instances as having been quite corpse-like and no pulsation could 
be detected at the heart or in the arteries; the means of restoration em- 
ployed were chiefly warmth to the vertex, and friction to the body 
and limbs. It may be remarked that the possibility of the protrac- 
tion of such a state (supposing that no deception vitiates the authen- 
ticity of the narrative referred to) can be much better comprehended 
as occurring in India, than as taking place in this country ; since the 
warmth of the tropical atmosphere and soil would prevent any serious 
loss of heat, such as must soon occur in a colder climate, when the 
processes whereby it is generated are brought to a stand." 



78 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



The food, after being poured into the blood in that 
milky condition known as chyle, is almost immediately 
forced by the action of the central engine, the heart, 
through the millions of minute screens which make up the 
lungs, and is thus cleansed from much of its impurity and 
highly oxygenized. As true blood it now begins its cir- 
cuit. The body may be regarded as an organic Venice, 
whose canals— veins, arteries and capillaries — not only re- 
ceive the waste and wash of the city, but contain every 
thing needful to supply the inhabitants. The arrange- 
ments and regulations of the corporation are very com- 
plete. An environing ocean, the skin, constantly conveys 
away one form of impurity, while an extensive arrange- 
ment of sieves and screens, the kidneys, eliminates an- 
other form from the fluid supply. Millions of minute 
gondolas, the blood corpuscles, with crimson banners, pass 
and repass. Occasionally a white streamer marks the 
passage of a new vessel just from the central factory, the 
liver. The latter, though it is known to return some of 
its waste product, the bile, by a circuitous course into the 
common current, and also to produce much of the sugar 
found in this wonderful stream, is to a considerable extent 
a mystery. The office of a neighboring structure, the 
spleen, is still more mysterious. In fact, there is mys- 
tery attendant upon most of the operations which go on 
here. There is a series of smaller drains, called lym- 
phatics, which are supposed to convey the surplus fluids 
from local reservoirs back to the main channels ; their 
office, however, is not fully understood. A uniform tem- 
perature of 98^° is sustained ; just how is not clear. As- 



IS THERE AN UNKNOWN FORCE? 79 



similation, the process by which all the repairs are made, 
is not well understood. But perhaps the most mysterious 
of all the operations of the human body is that manifested 
in feeling and mind, as coexisting with nerve movement. 

" The soul of things, 
The life that haunts us with imaginings, 
That lives, breathes, throbs in all we hear or see, 
The charm, the secret hidden everywhere 
Evades all reason, spurns philosophy, 
And scorns by boasting science to be tracked, 
Hunt as we will all matter to the end, 
Life flits' before it ; last, as first, we find 
Naught but dead structure and the dust of fact ; 
The infinite gap we cannot apprehend, 
The somewhat that is life — the informing mind." 1 

Psychologists have proven the close connection between 
all forms of consciousness and nerve excitation ; have 
even traced correspondences between complex psychical 
phenomena and minute sub-divisions of the nervous 
system. But none have shown why movement in nerve 
substance possesses a subjective phase. If all forms of 
molecular movement had a subjective side, the difficulty 
would be lessened. To be sure, our knowledge of heat, 
electricity, and light is very limited ; and it may be true 
that every movement in nature and existence has a sub- 
jective side, of which man ordinarily cannot be cogni- 
zant. 

Prof. Geo. F. Barker has shown very conclusively, by 
the experimental method, that thought and feeling are 

1 In the glen at Vallombrosa. — Story. 



8o 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



correlated with heat and electricity. Correlation im- 
plies sameness in the essentials. If emotion indicates 
the presence of electricity, conversely electricity, as well 
as objective force generally, may indicate the presence 
of something corresponding to what we term emotion or 
thou ght. 

There are certain recorded phenomena, as well authen- 
ticated as any history can be, which would indicate, if 
true, something of this sort. Emmanuel Kant, whose 
reputation for accuracy and honesty is unquestioned, and 
who asserts that " the inhabitants of a whole city, of 
whom the greater portion are still alive [August, 1758], 
were witnesses of the fact, and concur in bearing testi- 
mony to the memorable occurrence," narrates the follow- 
ing of Swedenborg : 

" In the year 1756, when Swedenborg, toward the end 
of September, on Saturday, at four o'clock p.m., arrived 
at Gothenburg, from England, Mr. William Castel in- 
vited him to his house, together with a party of fifteen 
persons. About six o'clock Swedenborg went out, and 
after a short interval returned to the company, quite 
pale and alarmed. He said that a dangerous fire had 
just broken out in Stockholm, at the Sundermalm, 
(Gothenburg is about three hundred English miles from 
Stockholm,) and that it was spreading very fast. He was 
restless, and went out very often. He said that the house 
of one of his friends, whom he named, was already in 
ashes, and that his own was in danger. At eight o'clock, 
after he had been out again, he joyfully exclaimed : 
' Thank God ! the fire is extinguished the third door 



IS THERE AN UNKNOWN FORCE? 8 1 



from my house.' This news occasioned great commo- 
tion throughout the whole city, and particularly among 
the company in which he was. It was announced the 
same evening to the governor. On Sunday morning 
Swedenborg was sent for by the governor, who questioned 
him concerning the disaster. Swedenborg described the 
fire precisely, how it had begun, in what manner it 
ceased, and how long it had continued. On the same 
day the news spread through the city, for the governor 
had thought it worthy of attention. On Monday even- 
ing a messenger arrived at Gothenburg, who was des- 
patched during the time of the fire. In the letters 
brought by him, the fire was described precisely in the 
manner stated by Swedenborg. On Tuesday morning 
the royal courier arrived at the governor's with the sad 
intelligence of the fire, confirming all the particulars 
given by Swedenborg immediately after it had ceased, 
for the fire was extinguished at eight o'clock." If we 
accept this account as true, it may best be explained, as 
already said, on the supposition that all molecular move- 
ment has attached to itself, were we able to recognize the 
fact, a subjective phase, which Swedenborg, in this par- 
ticular instance and in some other instances during his' 
life, was enabled, because of his peculiar psychical develop- 
ment, to perceive. 

The existence of a universal ether, filling all space, and 
the interstices of ail bodies, — a necessary hypothesis in 
science, — has a significance. It is probable that this ether 
is but an attenuated form of ordinary matter, and ex- 
tremely sensitive to the impact of any force ; being con- 



82 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



stantly affected by the properties of denser bodies with 
which it comes in contact. Admitting this, and we 
must recognize as a verity the " nerve atmosphere," of 
which George Crooke, the English mathematician wrote, 
" surrounding every person, and affecting the atmosphere 
of every other person and thing." If under any con- 
ditions the will could have power to induce molecular 
movement in this atmosphere, there is reason to believe 
that the " psychic force," which the eminent chemist, 
Wm. Crooks, claims to have discovered, is also a verity. 
If so, much light would be thrown on the subject of 
mesmerism, hypnotism, clairvoyance, and spiritualism. 

Dr. Wm. B. Carpenter, in his discussion of these sub- 
jects, cites instances where mesmerized patients had their 
limbs amputated without realizing any pain ; and yet ex- 
plains the phenomena on the hypothesis of " expectancy " 
on the part of the patients. With all deference to so 
eminent an authority, this theory seems to conflict even 
with his own reasoning. In the same treatise he attempts 
to demonstrate that the will of every individual is free ; 
and certainly free will would never submit to having a 
needle thrust deeply under the finger nail, or to having 
the hand held in a flame, unless for the American Indian's 
reason, to show powers of endurance. While if the will 
is not free, it seems to be useless to talk of " subjugating 
the mind to a dominant idea," unless done by some out- 
side force. There seems to be a positive and wonderful 
influence exerted at times, in some way related to the 
psychical nature of the operator. Admitting that ninety- 
nine per cent, of the marvels of mesmerism, clairvoy- 



IS THERE AN UNKNOWN FORCE? 83 



ance, spiritualism, etc., are best explained by intentional 
fraud, self-deception, imperfect perception, or imagination, 
who shall say that the remaining one per cent, may not 
be due to some unknown force ? Indeed, if we would 
escape from the charge of inordinate egotism, we must 
conclude with Hamlet, that 

" There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 

The power said to have been exerted by Greatrakes, 
Gassner, Puysegur, and others, for healing disease, may 
not have been different in kind from that exemplified in 
personal influence generally. But the peculiar fascina- 
tion of the mistress for her lover, the sway which the 
orator exerts over his auditors, to make them weep or 
laugh according to his will, are in themselves wonderful ; 
and if such power admits of being greatly augumented it 
may take on very surprising attributes. Suppose Mesmer 
did claim to have "magnetized tJie sun!" it only proves 
the remarkable faith he had in his own power, since he is 
not accused of having been a madman. 

Quite ordinary phenomena seem to indicate that the 
will of an individual does at times affect the ether or 
nerve atmosphere about him. " Speak of the deil and 
he 's always nigh," and " Coming events cast their shadows 
before," may be converse propositions. The horse is 
careful of his timid rider, and the dog feels the frowning 
spirit of his master. When aroused or excited, the will- 
power of an individual is visibly increased. An expert 
billiard-player pitted against an antagonist, evinces his 



84 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



will seemingly not only in delicacy of touch and control 
of his cue, but upon the balls themselves as they roll. 
That such influence, if it exists, depends upon the physi- 
cal condition cf the person using it, is reasonable ; and it 
is also apparent why it is not usually manifested. The 
stream of individual life continues closely under the con- 
trol of hereditary influences, from the cradle to the grave. 
Even after growth ceases and the law of race asserts its 
sway, the surplus energy not absorbed in the ordinary 
•occupations is usually dissipated under this second law. 
Moulded simply by the action and reaction of balanced 
forces, directed by the leverage of descent into ancestral 
lines, physiologically, psychologically, and too frequently 
pathologically, the organism can gain but little. The 
nervous system, like other parts, is enlarged through 
alternate states of exercise and rest. The quality of the 
work is an important factor however. A person engaged 
for a lifetime in purely intellectual pursuits, may be in- 
creasing constantly in the aggregate amount of nerve 
substance, and yet gain little or nothing in real power. 
In fact he may merely exemplify the condition of brains 
overmuch, and like the great Scaliger, come to be regarded 
as a pedantic human porcupine. But when these in- 
flowing forces are controlled to the harmonious growth 
and refinement of the psychical nature, it is reasonable to 
believe that there is a peculiar force developed, whose 
properties are for the most part unknown. This re- 
ceives confirmation from the precepts of Puysegur, which 
he cites in his "Memoirs" as warranting success in 
dunamizing : Active will to do good — Firm belief in 
one's own power — Entire confidence in its use. 1 ' 



IS THERE AN UNKNOWN FORCE? 85 



The conditions on which such power, if it exists, de- 
pends, are doubtless transmitted as other physical traits 
are transmitted ; and an individual may be surprised at 
some period of life to find himself manifesting a peculiar 
energy. Says the learned Bishop of Derry, George Rust : 
" Greatrakes would sometimes wonder at his power, and 
doubted at first whether he was not deceiving himself on 
its extent But he was fully convinced that it was a par- 
ticular favor which he had received, and hence he de- 
voted himself entirely to the cure of patients." That 
care and caution need to be exercised in the determina- 
tion of this matter, is doubtless true ; but that the human 
organism — never yet perfectly developed, never yet under- 
stood — may, in its possible attainments, manifest powers 
of the most wonderful character, none can deny. 



HAPTER V 



WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION ? 

Weeds— An Unexplored Sea— Various Lacks— Knowledge as a Solvent— 
The Antidote — The Dice of God— Standards— Positive Difficulties— 
Shakerism and Fourierism— A Higher Function— The Proof— A Moham- 
medan Paradise— " The Choir Invisible "—Fanaticism— The Monastic 
View— A Contrast— Weaknesses— Woman— The Key to Heaven— Chil- 
dren. 



O one can give a decisive answer to this question, be- 



x cause no one is prepared to say that he has tried 
the experiment. Ethics cannot be regarded as actually a 
barren field, yet it seems to be filled largely with medi- 
ocre products and very many weeds. The virtues of its 
soil for various reasons are allowed to remain untested. 
Of those who understand the location of this soil, many 
are doubtless ignorant of the conditions under which it 
will yield a crop, while a greater number may be indiffer- 
ent to all projects to cultivate it. Right living is not unlike 
discovering the " open Polar Sea," which Arctic explorers 
believe to exist, but which, encased in its barriers of pure 
ice, may require to warrant complete success, the endur- 
ance of a most extraordinary temperature. Whatever 
morality may be, we must regard the lack of results in 
this direction as due to certain other lacks on the part of 
mankind generally. 




86 



WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION? 87 



The first of these we enumerate is the lack of faith in 
human destiny. This lack is not limited to the latitudes 
of atheism, positivism, or skepticism of any sort, but will 
be found to prevail extensively in the environments of de- 
caying church creeds, among the paralytics of overthrown 
doctrines, and in the bedridden wards of professed be- 
lievers. There is no mistaking that to-day an extensive 
defection exists in the ranks of the faithful, and a 
growing indifference to the claims of a future life. Should 
we attempt to investigate the cause of this, the situation 
will not be found so entirely hopeless as might at first be 
supposed ; for we shall doubtless discover that the cause 
which has tended more than any other to bring this state 
of things about, has been the increase of knowledge, 
which, flooding the common level, has acted as a solvent 
on many cherished beliefs. Instead of finding his 
treasures to consist of enduring substance, the amazed 
owner, in many instances, discovers them to have entire- 
ly dissolved in the mixture which he himself has helped 
to compound. The spell broken, the believer may find 
that he has been including in his faith, matters quite on a 
par with other things which he always regarded as ab- 
surd, or, he may find that what he really thought himself 
to believe, does not admit of belief. And though all in- 
stances are to be deplored where the strength of the old 
bonds is such that when broken asunder the adherent is 
plunged into a gulf of utter despondency, or forced to 
wander aimlessly on the plains of unbelief, yet true wis- 
dom always offers an antidote for the wound it inflicts, 
and must prove, sooner or later, beneficial. 



88 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



Faithlessness in man's physical nature prevails. If the 
human body increases in power according to a fixed law, 
it would seem to be of considerable importance that 
that law be recognized and conformed to. As an old 
writer remarks : " Too often we are weak because it 
never enters into our thoughts that we might be strong if 
we would." If it be possible to attain the power of an 
endless life, doubtless such a result could only be se- 
cured as liberty in a State is secured, by " eternal vigil- 
ance"; not so much in regard to details perhaps as to 
general principles. While owing to our blindness and 
the intricacies of the road we travel, this may be impossi- 
ble at present, we should at least avail ourselves of the 
light we have. Too frequently, doubtless, we imitate the 
customs of the Roman emperors, and the body is made a 
coliseum of delights, where appetite and passion contend 
to the debasement and destruction of the life within. St. 
Paul had such an exalted idea of the human body as to 
style it " the temple of God," and of those professing 
belief in the infallible inspiration of the Scriptures, how 
many could fearlessly receive the statement : " If any 
man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy ; 
for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are "? 
And where among those professing no such belief shall 
we look for a higher standard or more exalted results ? 

Faithlessness in the universe is another form. The 
misunderstood utterances of Spencer, Huxley, and some 
other leaders in philosophy and science, have doubtless 
caused something of this, — misunderstood utterances, be- 
cause these men do not deny the existence of an over- 



WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION? 89 



ruling Intelligence, but merely assert that the Unknown 
Cause may be something vastly higher than any thing 
with which we can compare it. Man's oldest enemy, igno- 
rance, must be held chiefly responsible for this special 
defect. Man as ever distrusts what he cannot under- 
stand. When he observes fraud to succeed where integ- 
rity is set aside ; when he discovers pretence to count for 
more than unquestioned merit, he is quite likely to 
query whether, after all, the assertions that truth must 
prevail and justice triumph are not cant utterances to 
catch the unwary ; and whether the natural promptings 
of selfishness should not be allowed free scope — except 
that for the sake of appearances their workings be dis- 
creetly hidden. Man's origin and much of his career 
are against his holding right views on this point. Only 
an Emerson, probably, can pass fearlessly along, believing 
that " Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every 
virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed in silence and 
certainty"; only a Carlyle feel confident that " There is 
a Godlike in all human affairs ; that God not only made 
us and beholds us, but is in us and around us ; that the 
age of miracles, as it ever was, now is." And yet we all 
shall find, sooner or later, probably, no classical utterance 
to be more profoundly rooted in truth, than that " The dice 
of God are always loaded," — no scriptural assertion more 
certain of realization than that "The wages of sin is 
death"; for careful scrutiny ever discloses the fact that 
evils like forces are correlated, and always lead to the 
grave. 

Faithlessness in man s physical nature and in the uni- 



9 o 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



verse constitutes very complete barriers to advancement 
not only hindering progress but laying the foundation for 
common dishonesty and crime. Though not so appalling 
in its effects, the lack of an unquestioned standard of 
morality has undoubtedly a bewildering influence upon 
many. 

Including morality in religion, theologians have an- 
swered the question, How may we know when we are 
right ? or, What is the rule for right action ? variously. 
The Roman Catholic Church declares that the combined 
wisdom of the Church itself, as embodied in its laws and 
dispensed by its officers, must constitute the only rule for 
individual action. The Protestant Church, holding that 
all our knowledge of true religion depends upon the 
record, maintains the Scriptures as the basis of morality 
and religion ; while a German school of theology, claim- 
ing that individual judgment must determine the moral 
character of every act, has, within a few years, declared 
that the human conscience is the only arbiter of human 
action. 

Philosphers, striving by rigid analysis to reach some 
fundamental law of right action, have varied still more 
in their conclusions. According to Confucius, " Filial 
piety is the root of all the virtues." Pythagoras held that 
the mind must be absorbed into the unity of being, and 
hence he declared the necessity for strict regimen by 
which the soul mortifies the senses and restricts their 
dominion. The doctrine of Socrates was that " Virtue 
is a knowing," because it is said Socrates could not con- 
ceive how a man could know the good and yet not do it. 



I 

WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION? 9 1 

The stoical Zeno said, " Live according to nature and 
follow her." Said Plato, " Make thyself like to God." 
" Become like the perfect man," said Aristotle. Accord- 
ing to Epicurus, men should strive to attain that true 
pleasure which consists in tranquillity of mind. As the 
Greek philosophers differed in their ethics, so the ethical 
systems of Arabia differed ; so differ the German and 
the French schools. 

Something of the diversity in the English ethical sys- 
tems is seen in the fact that Hobbes based his theory on 
pure selfishness, while Hutchinson's ground was pure 
benevolence ; that, according to Price, virtue is con- 
formity to a moral law, while Paley resolved all virtue 
into utility ; and that while Locke referred all morality 
to sensation, Butler referred it to the moral sense, Hume 
to instinct, and Beattie to common-sense. 

In fact, the world has been filled with philosophies and 
plans for right living, from the Pentateuch of Moses to 
the " Law of Love " of President Hopkins, from Buddha's 
mysticism to Herbert Spencer's Social Statics ; and 
taking into account the existence of so many different 
theories and systems, and also the fact that in order to 
frame a complete system of morals, there must be, in the 
first place, a complete comprehension of man, some have 
concluded that a science of morals is impossible. Yet, 
as Froude justly observes: "That we have been often 
wrong does not imply that we may not be right at last. 
Our faculties have a correspondence with truth. They 
were given to us to lead us into truth, and though they 
fail many times they may bring us right at last." 



9 2 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



There are positive as well as negative difficulties in the 
way. False teaching is one. If right living should lead 
to perfection, all schemes of education, in general, which 
have reference to the immediate only, and not to the 
possible in man, are defective. A few years of prepara- 
tion cannot be regarded as sufficient to offset all eternity ; 
especially when these few years are employed in gaining 
a knowledge merely of the most approved methods of 
amassing wealth. If this theory be true, an acknowl- 
edgment of that fact would doubtless suggest changes 
in educational methods and subjects. Probably more 
attention would be given to the law of individual 
development, and the facts in regard to race development 
would be more thoroughly investigated. 

If this theory be true, it would be sufficient perhaps to 
impress that fact on the mind of every youth and leave 
him free to solve the problem in his own way ; since 
independent power and happiness must be secured, it is 
evident, so far as possible by independent effort. 

Race development and the problems growing out of it 
have been the most difficult questions for society to 
settle. If right living leads to perfection, a simple and 
complete solution to all these problems is offered ; which 
fact may be regarded as strongly affirmative of the 
question. 

Pope says : 

" All nature is but art unknown to thee ; 
All chance, direction which thou canst not see ; 
All discord, harmony not understood ; 
All partial evil universal good." 



WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION ? 93 



Regarding this as sound philosophy, we must conclude 
that progress consists largely in readjustments and the 
destruction of social factors no longer useful. Thus 
polygamy at an early period was undoubtedly a great 
benefit to the world, but in civilized countries to-day it 
is clearly the reverse. The "partial evil " of antagonistic 
systems becomes more apparent as time rolls on. For 
illustration, compare Shakerism and Fourierism : both 
holding that the " Revelation of God is progressive " ; 
both claiming to embody the truth ; both centered upon 
love as an axis ; yet the one enjoining absolute conti- 
nence, the other absolute freedom. If the former's teach- 
ings prevailed with all, not only would much misery 
ensue, but the race would soon be depleted, if not eradi- 
cated. While results prove that the exalted if visionary 
theories of Fourier, when put in practice, become nothing 
more than criminal licentiousness. Yet we can conceive 
of social conditions where to know virtue would be to 
practise it— where the incitives to practise it would be no 
greater than the resultant pleasures ; where the central 
element of these two systems should prove triumphant, 
though practised without restriction. For if " Knowledge 
is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven," love is the 
atmosphere through which we must pass ; which, like the 
earth's atmosphere, supports by its resistance, and vivifies 
all by the beautiful imagery it affords. Free love has 
been the rock on which many an earnest and honest 
investigator has shattered his philosophic bark ; either 
because he combined it with what appeared to be its most 
natural and obvious function, or because he confounded 



94 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 

a probable future condition of the race with the present. 
That love has a higher function than the voluptuary 
revelling in u The rank and steaming valleys of sense " 
assigns it, or the chimerical believer in some judicious 
social system of sexual selection claims for it, is capable 
of proof. If right living leads to perfection, the highest 
function of love is not the propagation of the race, but 
the development of the individual. To the investigator 
who recognizes the fact that the same agent at one stage 
of progress may perform an entirely different function 
from that performed at an earlier stage, this view will 
seem neither absurd nor strange. However necessary it 
may be to health and happiness, relatively considered, we 
have already seen that in its lower function love is sooner 
or later self-destructive, and tends to the destruction of 
the individual. Besides, all love, whether of nature or of 
man, has the same source in the surplus energy of the 
individual ; and upon this surplus energy of the individual 
all advancement must necessarily depend. Until this 
fact is recognized; until intelligent men and women agree 
to hold love as a destructive agent in abeyance so far as 
possible, and to employ their surplus energies in the devel- 
opment of keener sensibilities and greater intellectual 
acumen ; until, by mutual agreement of the sexes, all 
exercise of instinctive love comes to be regarded with pity 
rather than scorn and contempt ; until the jealousies 
arising from sex relations come to be considered as brutish 
rather than human, can we look for any great degree of 
advancement. If we follow the advice of John Stuart 
Mill, and " Stick to the argument from design," we shall 



WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION ? 95 



find ample evidence to prove that love has a higher 
function than science has been wont to claim for it, in 
the fact that its workings are manifested quite as fre- 
quently where it meets no acceptance, or where it cannot 
be satisfied, as where it is reciprocated, or admits of 
satisfaction. In this view, unsatisfied love, while a seem- 
ing evil, may be a positive good. 

If this conclusion be condemned as unnatural, we must 
remember that in the same sense of the word all progress 
is not natural but artificial ; since savages rather than 
civilized men are natural. If this conclusion be con- 
demned as harsh and cruel, it may be answered that all 
implied harshness is owing to our disjointed and ignorant 
social condition probably. Even if severity were neces- 
sary, the end sought would justify all the pangs which 

" Dreary gleams about the moorland flying over Locksley Hall," 

could harrow up— all the sorrow for a 

" Rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore," 

— all the agony which lover or mistress ever endured, if 
only love's refining influence should attain its perfect 
work. Those saddest words, " It might have been," 
must be regarded as sad merely as a sentiment, but not as 
a fact ; for if it had been, abstractly speaking, we might 
never have had the poem or the poet : 

" Pet Canary, pretty creature, warbling in his cage, 
Beautiful and bright his plumage, just the singing age, 
All alone he hung suspended in the morning light, 
When within a swinging mirror, something caught his sight. 
Alas, my pet Canary ! 



g6 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



" Hushed his voice, his wings upraising, all intent his eye, 
Striving in that charming vista that same form to spy ; 
Then there burst in sweetest cadence on my listening ear 
Such a song as I can hardly hope again to hear. 
My pretty, pet Canary ! 

" It was first exultant, thrilling, strong, and full of glee ; 
Then it fell to softer accents, sad as sad could be — 
Singing to his own reflection all the live-long day ; 
Yet I could not find the heart to take that glass away. 
My poor, deceived Canary ! 

" But his song so full of rapture, was it all in vain ? 
Was there not in joyous feeling much the greater gain ? 
For pervading all the household, trembling on the air, 
Merry music touched each spirit, lightened every care. 
Happy, blithe Canary ! " 

The evidence of love's exalted office lies in the suffer- 
ings it has soothed, in the sympathy for justice and right 
it has created, in the restraints it has secured over lawless 
passion, in the ideal of beauty it has incited, in the deeds 
of nobleness it has inspired. 

No one can afford to be Pharisaical or censorious in 
tli is matter. While monogamy must be upheld as the 
guardian of purity, too often it is but a screen for immor- 
ality ; and those who would " cast the first stone," if 
judged by an absolute standard, would doubtless rank 
lower than the unfortunate social outcast. Yet if life be 
life and heaven possible, if every exertion for the right 
must have its effect, there is no sadder picture than those 
present who, with infinite possibilities before them, pass 
through life as driftwood to the ocean, clinging at times 



WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION? 97 



to some fixed and worthy purpose, yet feebly struggling 
with the eddies of dizzy passion or the current of circum- 
stance, till they are finally swallowed up in the great sea ! 

The ideal Christian heaven is somewhat indefinite, but 
if it should be determined by the prevailing ideal of this 
life and its practices, it is a question whether the heaven 
of the majority, if realized, would be any thing more than 
a Mohammedan paradise. The positivist's view seems 
equally hopeless, for with positivism morality seems to be 
comoarativelv without significance. Of what use to 

" Join the choir invisible 
of those immortal dead who live again 
In lives made better by their presence," 

when the period comes that there are no lives to make 
better ? 

Says Mallock : " When the individual dies, he can only 
be said to live by metaphor, in the results of his outward 
actions. When the race dies, in no thinkable way can we 
say that it will live at all. Every thing will then be as 
though it never had been. Whatever humanity may have 
done before its end arrives, however high it may have 
raised itself, however low it may have sunk itself 

" ' The event 
Will trammel up the consequence, and catch, 
With its success, surcease.' 

All the vice in the world, and all its virtue, all its pleas- 
ures, and all its pains, will have affected nothing. They 
will all have faded like an unsubstantial pageant, and not 
left a wrack behind." 



9 8 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



Accustomed to believe that 

" Life is real, life is earnest," 
And the grave is not its goal w 

shall we conclude, then, that life is a fraud and man merely 
its dupe 

The law of Malthus points to a period of misery if not 
starvation for the race, if the world's population increases 
without check. Yet, as W. R. Greg has pointed out, such 
an evil may be not merely obviated by the restraints of 
cerebral development and kindred influences, but a 
danger incurred quite the reverse of this, and the " race 
multiply too slowly rather than too fast." As knowledge 
increases such would seem to be the inevitable result, 
unless that knowledge should contain the potency of life 
to man individually. 

The eternity of matter and of force has been in- 
scribed on the banners of science ; the facts of history 
and of progress are assured ; then who can doubt that that 
omnipotent Force which is in and through all existence 
works to increase and develop intelligence — to the end 
of perfectionment in man ? 

The dangers of fanaticism must not be overlooked; for 
the efforts of the fanatic, aside from his own personal 
hurt, may be serious hindrances to progress : through 
mistaken zeal, if his cause is bad; and if the reverse, 
by belittling the principles he represents. What more 
admirable human quality, however, than the indomitable 
earnestness of the fanatic ? True, this is not very ap- 
parent in such instances as that of St. Macarius, sleep- 
ing in a marsh and exposing his body naked to the 



99 



stings of insects ; or cf the pious Silvia, who on religious 
principles never washed any part of her person except 
her fingers, yet the same quality in a Tycho Brahe, a 
Kepler, or a Columbus, readily excites admiration. 
Religion, in which the term originated, seems to have 
been the peculiar province of fanaticism. Says Mil- 
man : " According to the monastic view of Christianity, 
the total abandonment of the world, with all its ties and 
duties, as well as its treasures, its enjoyments, and objects 
of ambition, advanced rather than diminished the hopes 
of salvation. Why should they fight for a perishing 
world, from which it was better to be estranged ? " It 
would not seem that a doctrine upholding the grandeur 
and beauty of the material world, and urging the em- 
ployment of all means to improve and perfect man's 
nature here and now, would be so liable to develop fanati- 
cism, as a doctrine based upon some unknown mode of 
existence. Yet there are examples. In the year 1700, 
John Asgill published " An argument to prove that by 
the new covenant man may be translated into eternal life 
without tasting death." He regarded death subsequent 
to Christ's sacrifice as the result of an obstinate habit, 
which he intends to avoid. Having discovered " an en- 
gine in Divinity to convey man from earth to heaven," he 
will " play a trump on death and show himself a match 
for the devil." 1 

This project to scale the walls of existence at a leap 
seems to have been induced chiefly by the emotional 
nature. Fanaticism is doubtless developed in this field 
through false reasoning also. Man has many weaknesses, 

1 Alger's " Doctrines of a Future Life," p. 431. 



IOO THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYIXG. 



from which existing notions of a heavenly existence 
quite naturally release him. Accordingly, if one is led 
in any way to believe that the present life is capable 
of infinite extension, he may begin at once to eliminate 
all personal defects. Such an effort is certainly laud- 
able, but if not taking into account the fact that deeds 
of permanence require for their attainment long periods 
of time, he seeks immediate results, fanaticism is likely 
to develop. Man requires food, of a certain quality 
and quantity. And though this requirement may be a 
weakness and defect, as viewed in the light of human 
perfection, yet to attempt by prolonged abstinence to 
improve upon these ordinary needs, would be much like 
trying to rise in the world by pulling on one's boot- 
straps. Fully one-third of his time man passes as a 
vegetable, in sleep. Sleep, then, from the millennium 
stand-point, is a weakness ; yet no one can go without 
sleep, and it would be simply madness to make the 
attempt. The question of sleep, it may be remarked, is 
not fully understood, and along with kindred subjects 
affords opportunity for investigation. 

Psychical growth and reproduction are antagonistic, 
and it is easy to see how fanaticism might spring from 
this idea on the part of one desirous of developing his 
own nature and life. Let the asceticism of the past be 
the monitor to such a one. Let him read the warfare 
between animalism and extravagant asceticism, which 
has raged for more than three thousand years — the 
struggles with nature of pagan Stoics, Jewish Essenes, 
and Christian monks. Let him survey the astounding 



WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION ? 10 1 



penances of the desert saints ; the corruption and 
demoralization of sacerdotal classes; the hypocrisy of the 
Mulieres Subintroductcz ; the consecration and self- sacrifice 
of female devotees ; the humble penitence of self-con- 
stituted celibates, which displayed itself in all good 
works, — and perhaps his mind may be led to discriminate 
between the expedient and the perfect. The culture of 
to-day is undoubtedly indebted to the rigid if revolting 
asceticism of the past, both for that hereditary influence 
which incites self-restraint and for the pious precepts 
which inculcate virtue. Yet allowances must be made in 
judging of the past and its literature. The lesson to be 
drawn from Charles Reade's romance of " The Cloister 
and the Hearth " is certainly as important as that implied 
in the apocryphal story of " Paul and Thecla " ; and per- 
haps if the actual truth could be known the terrible 
penances of anchorites would be reduced in many cases 
to very mediocre affairs. The distinction between mor- 
tifying the physical nature, the actuating motive chiefly 
in the pagan and monachal systems, and developing that 
nature, is an important one ; yet individual attainment 
must depend upon individual judgment. Knowledge, 
labor, and love, the true agents of progress, are also the 
true remedies for fanaticism, and wherever these lack 
appreciation the fanatic may be looked for. 

Isaac Jennings, in a work entitled " The Tree of Life," 
published in 1867, looks forward to the speedy coming of 
Christ and the millennium — to a time when " Children, 
being no more born in sin, will attain to the full stature 
of perfect men, and there shall be no more death." 



102 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



The attainment of physical perfection, according to this 
work, will be the result of treating diseases upon " ortho- 
pathic " principles, and the disuse of stimulants, including 
" alcohol, tobacco, coffee, tea, animal food, spices, and 
caraway." 

To the paradise of Mr. Jennings no women need 
apply ; for " from 'femininity ' comes effeminacy, which 
though highly esteemed among men is an abomination in 
the sight of God." 1 Like the old Jewish writer who 
declares that " The badness of men is better than the 
goodness of women," Mr. Jennings outlaws the entire sex. 
This is not merely inconsistent, it is stupid. If woman 
be worse than man, she is also better. If in the outset 
man was tempted by her, to her alone must man finally 
look for guidance. For though the head may plan, it is 
the heart that leads. The key to paradise is love ; not 
love as shown merely in the passing smile, the youth's 
bright glances or the maiden's blush, but love with all its 
pains as well as pleasures, with its sorrows and its joys, 
which permeating the soul as sunlight the heavens, though 
clouded at times, contains the potency of highest glory. 
The key to paradise is love, and woman holds that key. 
Love alone can overpower and control the desire for life, 
and when these two strongest elements of man's nature 
are combined, what can be more powerful ? Will they 
lead him to perfection ? Indebted to woman as we all 
are for life, upon her larger sympathies and quicker con- 
science much must depend. Childhood's plastic nature 
is moulded by her hand, and if heaven lies before us, the 



1 Sec review in The Radical for March, 1868. 



WILL RIGHT LIVING LEAD TO PERFECTION ? 103 



eye of youth will be quickest to discern it. " Ex- 
cept ye become as a little child," says the great 
Teacher, " ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom 
of heaven." 



CHAPTER VII. 



SPIRIT AND MATTER. 



Terms — The Doctrine not Materialism — Not Spiritualism— Correlation of the 
Vital and Physical— Animism— Mistakes— John Milton— The Analogy of 
Sleep— Powers of the Perfect — Extravagance — The Earth and the Unseen 
—Job — The Dreariest and Brightest — Continuity — Infinity Inward — 
Conclusion. 



O be known to belong to a popular sect is sometimes 



A sufficient to screen one from odium, whether he actu- 
ally understands the principles of that sect or not. Such is 
the influence of terms — an influence to which all are more 
or less subject. Partly for this reason, we hasten to say 
that if the doctrine considered in the foregoing chapters 
be carefully examined, it will be found to partake of both 
spiritualism and materialism. That it involves something 
of both seems to be decidedly favorable, since each of 
two systems so extensive, though opposite, would seem to 
possess some truth. 

This doctrine of immortality, however, is not materi- 
alism, because it regards life, spirit, or soul, as some- 
thing more than matter, and advocates the development 
of this life, spirit, or soul, to the limit of perfection. 
Neither is this doctrine purely spiritualistic, because it re- 
gards matter as being quite as necessary to organic exist- 
ence as spirit. Confessing inability to see how force of 
any kind can exist without something to act upon, it 
confesses the same inability with regard to the action of 
"vital force" when life ceases, and holds that the exist- 




SPIRIT AND MATTER. 



I05 



ence of pure spirit disconnected from matter, is some- 
thing at least difficult to understand. Yet without denying 
the ancient doctrine of animism, it simply claims that 
there is no logical ground for supporting it. 

The mistake of spiritualism (so-called) seems to be in 
ignoring the present life, the only basis of real knowledge. 
If this life be a preparatory stage for a future life, is it 
more probable that that future life is of a kind corre- 
sponding to this, or totally unlike this ? The life we now 
possess is spiritual life, if we mean by spirit the converse 
of matter ; and all our ideas of loveliness and grandeur 
are spiritual, though standing for material forms. Sub- 
stance seems to be necessary in any mode of being. Those 
who are so prone to despise the gross substance of which 
things here are composed, should they ever happen to 
get into that hypothetical spiritual future, would they not 
be liable to exercise the same propensity, and despise the 
substance of things there ? We prefer to believe with Mil- 
ton " That man is a living being, intrinsically and prop- 
erly one and individual, not compound or separable, not, 
according to public opinion, made up and framed of two 
distinct and different natures, as of soul and body — but the 
whole man is soul, and the soul man ; that is to say, a body, 
or substance, individual, animated, sensitive, and rational/' 1 
We may be surrounded on all sides as Swendenborg held 
by the invisible spirits of an unseen universe, but so long as 
there is positive proof only that man can approach to such 
angelic natures by improving on his condition here, there 
is no advantage in the theory. 

1 " A Treatise on Christian Doctrine." By John Milton. Vol. i, 
pp. 250, 251. 



I06 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



"Time may come, when men 
With angels may participate, and find 
No inconvenient diet, nor too light fare ; 
And from these corporeal nutriments perhaps 
Your bodies may at last turn all to spirit, 
Improved by tract of time, and, winged, ascend 
Ethereal," — 

but we see no royal road to such a result as offered by 
death, which befalls one through accident or ignorance. 

Regarding the fact that every impulse of heart and 
brain is impressed, as by the photographer's art, in a 
thousand forms on surrounding matter ; regarding the 
fact that nothing is lost in the universe, the analogy of 
sleep, which takes away our consciousness each night, to 
return it with the sunlight, possessed of renewed energy, 
suggests that the consciousness which that long sleep of 
death takes from us may return again. But we can only 
conceive of man then as now, made up of body and spirit, 
and if such a period shall ever come, its arrival would 
seem to be somewhat dependent on a comprehension of 
the laws on which his being depends. 

Few would claim a future life for brutes, yet some 
brutes would seem to merit it as fairly as some savages, 
and some savages as fairly as some civilized people. The 
only logical conclusion is that humanity must work out its 
own salvation. And it may be, if that condition of power 
as well as joy desired by so many is ever reached, that the 
fortunate winners will remember their friends fallen in 
the race. And if the eye of the perfected man be keen 
enough to read the books of the universe and the records 
of the dead, if he possess the impartial judgment we may 



SPIRIT AND MA TTER. 



I07 



suppose him to possess, it may be that the brave and 
worthy of all time will be remembered. At least all those 
whose former record should warrant the supposition that 
for them to live again would be life indeed, and not re- 
newed disappointment and death. For the perfect man 
would achieve the victory not by his own efforts merely, 
but as the result of the efforts made by the honest, faith- 
ful workers of all time. And he would indeed be un- 
grateful if, possessing any power, whether of a personal 
or intercessory character, he did not use it in their be- 
half. 

If this seems extravagant language to any one, let him 
question himself whether he does not now entertain equally 
extravagant notions of a future life — and perhaps less 
practical and less definite. If not, he may be fairly en- 
titled to criticise, though not to deride. 

Select the dreariest scene of all the earth, the arid des- 
ert or the frozen north — yet if the heart be right and the 
conscience untroubled, the intelligent observer cannot fail 
to discover beauty and grandeur there. Increase that in- 
telligence — quicken that vision, and we know that the 
beauty and grandeur would be proportionately increased. 
The startling revelations of microscope and telescope are 
not due merely to refraction and the accurate definition of 
the objective, but to mind which makes the observation 
and which invented and constructed the instrument. If 
once that mind could fully recognize the laws of its own 
structure, why should not still greater power be attained ? 

Let an observer, as some Queen Mab reclining above 
the natural earth, behold as they roll by, forests of uncul- 



THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYIXC. 



tivated loveliness, cities with their palaces and stately 
domes, majestic oceans and the blue islands nestled upon 
their gold-fringed bosoms, long lines of transit spanning 
continents and binding as in a fairy chain the peaceful 
hamlet, rugged mountain, and enchanted lake ; let the 
vision of such a one move from the auroral crowned re- 
gions of the north, along glaciers and ice-fields, over 
plains of fir and cypress, amid corn-fields and yellow 
grain, through orange orchards and luxuriant tropical 
foliage, until again an ice-crested ocean bounds his sight ; 
let him watch the shadows of evening as they creep over 
the camp-fires of happy hearths, in peace-embowered 
vales, on the upland, and by the sea, till shrouded in 
night ail nature slumbers ; let him gaze upon the silver 
threads of morning, weaving a canopy for the western 
hills, until the shadows have all fled, and each streamlet, 
lake, and mist-haunted valley yields up its ghostly vest- 
ments to the golden, glorious sunlight, — and deny if he can 
that earth indeed is heaven ! Where are the achieve- 
ments, the hopes, the memories of man, but here ? The 
mines and quarries of science are here. The depositories 
of history are here. The gardens, the palaces, the rail- 
ways, the bridges, the machinery, the books, the paint- 
ings, — in a word, the treasures of art are here. All the 
materials requisite for the most exalted purposes are 
here — man alone is lacking. Man can exclaim with Job, 
"I am a brother to dragons and a companion to owls," 
for his fate is seemingly like that Job bewails : " I 
go whence I shall not return, even to the land of 
darkness and the shadow of death ; a land of darkness, 



SPIRIT AND MA TTER. 



IO9 



as darkness itself ; and of the shadow of death without 
any order, and where the light is as darkness." 

And yet there is no man who, gazing upon the most 
enduring monuments that earth affords, " the everlasting 
hills," or unchanging granite beds, that does not feel 
himself to be greater than these — who cannot reason with 
himself as Elihu with Job : " The spirit of God hath made 
me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life ! " 
And who shall say that that spirit in man, which, work- 
ing through the centuries, encumbered with false theories, 
dwarfed by the blight of withering ignorance, distorted by 
the action of scorching passion, has chiselled the human 
countenance divine from the repulsive features of an ape, 
— who shall say, that when freed from these influences it 
may not build him up into a god ? 

If the earth at times seems dreary, it is because man's 
spirit is dreary ; because through ignorance, folly, or social 
influence, which, as things are, he may be powerless to con- 
trol, the true current of his life is perverted. To such a 
one, death may be a boon ; and yet the universal law of 
justice affords a powerful argument in support of the sup- 
position that all such shall live again. In that same law 
of justice there is, moreover, an equally strong argument 
for the continued permanence of our planet. 

If the earth should its destiny reach this year, 

And the fears of fanatics prove true, 
Why should we have reason, in that case, to fear ? 
Or why such catastrophe rue ? 

For a balance hangs up in the sky, 
And every man's cause 
Shall be judged by the laws 
That govern the heavens on high. 



HO THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



Should humanity now have more reason to dread, 

If the world were so near to its close, 
Than the millions of beings once living, but dead, 
Had in thinking of their final woes ? 

And if no balance hangs in the sky, 
Or, if any man's cause 
Be not judged by its laws, 
What matters it when we shall die ? 

But the beacons of liberty shining above 

Disclose it through tyranny's night, 
And the torch-fires of justice which men ever love 
Reveal its proportions so bright ; 

And a balance does hang in the sky, 
And every man's cause 
Shall be judged by the laws 
That govern the heavens on high. 

Then the prayers of the nations down-trodden and crushed 

Would be mocked by the echoes of space, 
If the earth to its final destruction now rushed, 
And right would to error give place. 

By the balance that hangs in the sky, 
Which shall try every cause 
With its unerring laws, 
The end of the world is not nigh ! 

The earth, with its millions its path shall pursue 

Yet for aeons and aeons of years, 
Till the false and unjust shall give place to the true, 
Till the light shall have scattered all fears ; 
For the balance that hangs in the sky 
Hath determined its course, 
Through the all-potent force 
That governs the heavens on high. 



SPIRIT AND MA TT£A\ 



I I I 



Science and revelation unite in declaring that the earth 
shall finally pass away ; but with that catastrophe the 
question of man's physical immortality has nothing to do. 
The principle of continuity as an element of mind requires 
that man's future life should be a continuation of this ; 
and with this matter satisfactorily settled, we need fear 
no future. If infinity be, as it seems to be, inward as 
well as outward, that intelligence which should be the 
true goal of man's effort now will doubtless be competent 
to exist with any and every change in matter. The ques- 
tion which should occupy the attention now is practical 
and admits of immediate application. If the period for 
realizing such a scheme be far distant, it is none the less 
worthy of our attention now, and portends a condition 
not less worthy of present effort to attain. Shall we be- 
lieve in the possibility of such a result ? If it be true, it 
is quite immaterial whether we as individuals believe it or 
not. Jf it be true, committed to an unswerving purpose 
of knowing that truth, supported by the approval of loving 
hearts, relying on the inferences of scientific research, 
knowing that no pleasure, whether sensuous or intellectual, 
can equal the exalted satisfaction of a sympathetic, honest, 
and virtuous life, strong men shall arise, such as the earth 
has rarely if ever seen, who shall have, to guide and assist 
them, women of strength and beauty of character unsur- 
passed — and these shall attain that excellence to which 
we even now are urged as those of old were in the words: 
" Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, 
and all these things shall be added unto you ! " 

The gnats beneath the summer's pregnant wave 
Know not their future is the upper air , 



112 THE POSSIBILITY OF NOT DYING. 



That free-winged moth's existence it shall share, 

The chrysalis, within its seeming grave, 

No token gives : so man, the abject slave 

Of circumstance, may still be heir 

To life and happiness beyond compare ; 

For power exists, if he but knew, to save ! 

If life is but a sleep and a forgetting, 

It is because we cherish merely dreams, 

And blindly crush the cup we hope to quaff ; 

New stars arise for every one that 's setting, 

We, thoughtless, fail to see their hopeful gleams, 

And call the world a farce and life a laugh. 



END. 



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